2019 indie feature “Honey Boy” not only starred but was also penned by actor Shia LaBeouf.
At the time, the film was sold on the fact that it was semi-autobiographical as it was based on LaBeouf’s own childhood stardom and fraught relationship with his ex-convict father when they were living in a San Fernando Valley motel.
LaBeouf portrayed his seemingly abusive father in the movie opposite Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges as younger versions of LaBeouf. Now though, three years later, LaBeouf has spoken on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast and revealed the film is not autobiographical and took creative liberties with the father character:
“I wrote this narrative, which was just f—ing nonsense. My dad was so loving to me my whole life. Fractured, sure. Crooked, sure. Wonky, for sure. But never was not loving, never was not there. He was always there… and I’d done a world press tour about how f—ed he was as a man.
Here’s a man who I’ve done vilified on a grand scale. I turned the knob up on certain s— that wasn’t real. My dad never hit me, never. He spanked me once, one time. And the story that gets painted in ‘Honey Boy’ is this dude is abusing his kid all the time.
I wronged him. I remember getting on the phone with him, and him being like, ‘I never read this stuff in the script you sent.’ Because I didn’t put that s— in there.”
The former “Transformers” and “Indiana Jones” actor revealed he BS’d his father to get permission to make the film. Since its release though he’s called his father and:
“[I] took accountability for all of that and knew very clearly that I couldn’t take it back. My dad was going to live with this certain narrative about him on a public scale for a very long time, probably the rest of his life.”
The comments come in the wake of LaBeouf making news in regards to a role he didn’t play – that of the husband to Florence Pugh’s character in Olivia Wilde’s thriller “Don’t Worry Darling”.
That film’s PR campaign is coming off a disastrous week. LaBeouf got involved when he released text messages, emails, and a video Olivia Wilde sent him to prove that he was not fired from the project as had been claimed, rather he says he quit over a lack of rehearsal time.
