James McAvoy says one of his Band of Brothers co-stars bullied him on his first day on set, and he still will not say who. Appearing on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live for a game of "Spill the IMDb-tea", he was shown a photo of the cast, scanned it, confirmed the man was in it, and refused to name him.
His account: one of the actors in the picture got his friends to stand, point at him and laugh for about three minutes. McAvoy described it as happening on his first day as a professional actor, straight out of acting school.
Why the veterans were angry
McAvoy's explanation was about screen time, not personality. The scene was a big ensemble scene in a bar. Most of the cast had been on the production for nine or ten months, he said, getting one line in one episode and another line ten episodes later. Then he arrived for a single episode with an arc, scenes and lots of lines. "They were all pissed."
His numbers fit the production. According to Wikipedia, Band of Brothers was shot over eight to ten months, mostly at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, the same site used for Saving Private Ryan. Twelve European towns were rebuilt on its open field.
The first day, with an asterisk
McAvoy called it his first day as a professional actor out of acting school. The second half of that is accurate. He graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2000, and Band of Brothers came out in 2001.
The first half needs a footnote. McAvoy made his screen debut at 15, in The Near Room (1995), after meeting actor David Hayman when Hayman visited his school to talk about Macbeth. Wikipedia lists his years active as starting in 1995. Band of Brothers was his first day on a set as a drama-school graduate, not his first day on a film set.
Who was in the photo
The picture shown on air, per Deadline, featured:
- Donnie Wahlberg as Carwood Lipton
- Kirk Acevedo as Joe Toye
- Scott Grimes as Donald Malarkey
- Philip Barantini as Wayne "Skinny" Sisk
- Neal McDonough as Lynn "Buck" Compton
- Adam James as Cleveland O. Petty
- Frank John Hughes as William "Wild Bill" Guarnere
- Ross McCall as Joseph Liebgott
McAvoy ruled out one name only. It was not David Schwimmer, he said, because Schwimmer was not in the photo. He also named the two who rescued the day: Dexter Fletcher and Robin Laing, who told him to come and hang out with them. Host Andy Cohen said he would get the answer during the commercial break. McAvoy said he would not confirm it.
His overall rating of the job: a nine out of ten, except for that day, which felt like a two.
Where it was made
Band of Brothers was an American story filmed in England. Besides Hatfield, North Weald Airfield in Essex stood in for the D-Day take-offs, and the Buckinghamshire village of Hambleden was used extensively in the early episodes. According to Wikipedia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair monitored the negotiations and spoke personally to Spielberg.
The cast McAvoy walked into had spent most of a year in those locations. By the time he arrived for his single episode, they had been working together for months.
The series he was joining
- Creators: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, adapting Stephen E. Ambrose's non-fiction book.
- Budget: about $125 million, an average of $12.5 million per episode, plus $15 million for promotion. At the time, the most expensive TV miniseries ever made.
- Premiere: on June 7, 2001, 47 Easy Company veterans were flown to Paris for the premiere screening.
- Broadcast: HBO, September 9 to November 4, 2001.
- Awards: the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries.
- McAvoy's role: Private James W. Miller.
- Production companies: Playtone, DreamWorks Television and HBO Entertainment. Episodes run 49 to 70 minutes.
- Related series: The Pacific and Masters of the Air.
McAvoy mostly worked in television until 2003, when his film career began. Within a few years he had moved on to the thriller State of Play, the miniseries Children of Dune, the drama Shameless and Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He had joined the ten-episode series for a single instalment, months after most of its cast had settled in.
What is still unknown
- Who it was. McAvoy has narrowed it to the photo and stopped there.
- Whether anyone in the photo responds publicly.
- Which episode. McAvoy did not say, and the show did not identify it.
Band of Brothers took most of a year to film, and most of its actors waited months between lines. McAvoy arrived with an arc for one episode, and spent his first three minutes on set being laughed at for it.