Jaws Actor Richard Dreyfuss Eviscerates Jaws Play

Richard Dreyfuss does not like the new Jaws play. In fact, he seems to absolutely hate the Jaws play.

The Academy Award-winning actor recently went to see The Shark Is Broken, a play which dramatizes the troubled production of Jaws. In particular, it centres on a supposed bust-up between Dreyfuss, who plays Matt Hooper in Spielberg’s 1975 film, and Robert Shaw, who played Quint.

"The problem is that they made my character the fool," Dreyfuss told Vanity Fair. "They didn't do that to Roy [Scheider], and they didn't do that to Robert. And that hurt because it wasn't true."

"It was pretty awful," Dreyfuss continued. "Ian [Shaw]—who has more than any right to write whatever he wants—never called me and said, 'Give me some background.' Or, 'Give me your take on this and this.' And they just decided to make my character a big jerk."

The Shark Is Broken is co-written by the son of Robert Shaw, Ian, based on his dad’s old diaries. “In 2017, I read a drinking diary my father kept, which I found painful and very brave," writes Ian. "I had a moustache for another role I was playing. Suddenly I realized I looked like Quint. We were the same age. So I sketched out some ideas for a play…I read about the extraordinary difficulties they had making Jaws, and it occurred to me that there was an interesting story behind the scenes of one of cinema’s most legendary movies.”

The Shark Is Broken is currently playing on Broadway. If you want to familiarise yourself with the film, it's currently on Netflix, along with these 10 scariest movies to watch now on Netflix.