Taron Egerton Opens Up About Working with ‘Hero’ Ray Liotta on ‘Black Bird’
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It’s been one month since Ray Liotta died on May 26, and fans are still able to see him on screen one more time.
The late “Goodfellas” icon passed away in his sleep at age 67 while filming “Dangerous Waters” in the Dominican Republic. One of Liotta’s final screen credits is the AppleTV+ limited series “Black Bird” co-starring Taron Egerton, which premieres July 8.
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While promoting the series on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” Egerton opened up about working with his “hero” Liotta.
“Sometimes actors can be…we’re a weird bunch, we do weird stuff, so I thought I’d leave him to it, give him his space, and across the room he sort of caught my eye and just stood up, walked towards me in a sort of frail way,” the “Rocketman” alum said. “He’s in ailing health in the show, and he just embraced me, and we stayed that way for a little while. It was kind of weird but really nice as well.”
Egerton, who plays Liotta’s onscreen son in the prison thriller, continued, “He was something of a hero to me, and when I read this script it’s got a very touching and really dysfunctional relationship at the heart of it.”
“Black Bird” is based on James Keene and Hillel Levin’s true-crime memoir “In With the Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption.” Liotta’s daughter, Karsen Liotta, and his fiancée, Jacy Nittolo, attended the premiere to honor the late star.
“We really have lost one of the greats, and he’s amazing in the show,” Egerton added. “I loved, loved working with him.”
Liotta’s one-time collaborator Martin Scorsese shared that he was “absolutely shocked” over Liotta’s “unexpected” passing.
“He was so uniquely gifted, so adventurous, so courageous as an actor,” Scorsese shared, later admitting that he regrets not working with Liotta again after “Goodfellas.”
“We had many plans to work together again but the timing was always off, or the project wasn’t quite right. I regret that now,” Scorsese wrote in an essay for The Guardian. “I wish I’d had the chance to see him just once more, too — to tell him just how much the work we did together meant to me. But maybe he knew that. I hope so.”
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