Brad Pitt reminisces with his Fight Club stuntman turned Bullet Train director
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Brad Pitt has history with David Leitch, his director on Bullet Train.
Twenty-four years ago, the two met on the set of the movie Fight Club. Pitt was in the starring role of Tyler Durden, a soap salesman and provocateur who forms a fight club. Leitch was his stunt double. "He trained me for the fights, and it worked so well that we went on and did several other films, like Troy," Pitt says on EW's Around the Table video series. "So in that scenario, he's helping me with my character in some ways."
On Bullet Train, Pitt and and Leitch say their relationship has come full circle as they reunited on the film, only this time with Leitch as Pitt's director. "He's developed into a director with his own vernacular, his own language, and it's really fun to see," the star says. "And to get to come on board in that capacity and now with my director, David Leitch, the ultimate author of the piece, was really beautiful symmetry for our friendship."
Bullet Train, based on the 2010 novel Maria Beetle by author Kōtarō Isaka, follows an assassin codenamed Ladybug (Pitt), who's cursed with bad luck, as he boards a high-speed train in Japan on a mission to retrieve a briefcase. Things quickly take a turn when he realizes he's not the only assassin on board.
Leitch admits he was nervous when Sony suggested Pitt for the lead role. He feared his friend and former colleague would say no. "It's really humbling for me as a director to have him validate a piece of material and say, 'I want to make this, and make it with you, and I see you as a filmmaker,'" Leitch says. "We go back, like, 20 years now, so that full-circle moment was pretty special."
Pitt and Leitch joined some of their fellow Bullet Train stars Brian Tyree Henry, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Bad Bunny to discuss the film for EW's Around the Table. Watch the conversation in the video above.
Bullet Train is now playing in theaters.
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