Adam Driver Leaves 'Fresh Air' Interview After Hearing Himself In 'Marriage Story'
Related:
Laura Dern Discusses Hit Film 'Marriage Story'
On The Promotional Trail
Adam Driver is currently on the promotional trail for two very different films, Marriage Story and Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. He's getting major awards buzz (and a Golden Globe nomination) for Marriage Story while Rise Of Skywalker has the potential to be one of the biggest films of all time. Basically, it's a great time to be Adam Driver.
However, there was an awkward bump in the press tour when Driver abruptly left an interview on NPR's Fresh Air after host Terry Gross played a clip of Driver in Marriage Story.
NPR Responds
One of Fresh Air's executive producers, Danny Miller, explained to Variety that Gross played a clip of Driver singing Stephen Sondheim's "Being Alive," which caused Driver to exit the interview.
"We don’t really understand why he left. We were looking forward to the interview—Terry thinks he’s a terrific actor, he was a great guest when he was on [“Fresh Air”] in 2015—so we were disappointed that we didn’t have a new interview to share with our listeners about Marriage Story."
We knew from our previous interview with Adam Driver that he does not enjoy listening back to clips of his movies (that isn’t unusual, a lot of actors feel that way). So Terry invited him to take off his headphones while we played back the 20-second clip, and that our engineer in New York would cue him to put his headphones back on after the clip ended (we also did this during our 2015 interview). But this time around, after the clip concluded we were informed by our engineer in NY that he had walked out of the studio, and then left the building. We still don’t understand why Adam Driver chose to leave the interview at that point."
NPR Should Have Done Their Research
Miller continued, citing a previous NPR interview with Driver.
">We knew from our previous interview with Adam Driver that he does not enjoy listening back to clips of his movies (that isn’t unusual, a lot of actors feel that way). So Terry invited him to take off his headphones while we played back the 20-second clip, and that our engineer in New York would cue him to put his headphones back on after the clip ended (we also did this during our 2015 interview). But this time around, after the clip concluded we were informed by our engineer in NY that he had walked out of the studio, and then left the building. We still don’t understand why Adam Driver chose to leave the interview at that point."
He Hates Watching His Work
Driver has spoken extensively about how he has a phobia of watching or listening to himself perform, ever since he saw his work in Inside Llewyn Davis. Driver told The New Yorker that he was sick watching his performance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
"I just went totally cold, because I knew the scene was coming up where I had to kill Han Solo, and people were, like, hyperventilating when the title came up, and I felt like I had to puke."
Driver even told Terry Gross in a previous Fresh Air interview that he hates to watch his own work.
"Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it. And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change."
