NEED TO KNOW
Ben Affleck stands by one of his most talked-about on-set movie moments.
The actor, 53, recently sat down with his The Rip costars — Matt Damon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Sasha Calle — to talk Boston sports. When asked who the more passionate Boston Red Sox fan is, they all rushed to answer the follow-up, “Who refused to wear a Yankees cap for a movie?”
Affleck famously led to a pause in production on the 2014 film Gone Girl when he refused to wear a New York Yankees baseball cap, refusing to even fictionally endorse his real-life favorite Boston Red Sox’s longtime rival. Director David Fincher ultimately relented and did not make Affleck wear the hat.
“Technically, I passed on a movie where —” Damon began, to which Affleck joked, “It always has to be about Matt.”
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“You actually shut production down because you wouldn’t work,” Damon laughed.
“The director shut it down by insisting that I wear that. I just had to take time to explain to him why it was a bad idea,” Affleck countered.
As the story of the on-set tiff goes, Affleck was asked to wear the Yankees hat because his character, Nick, had previously lived in New York with wife Amy (Rosamund Pike). The hat was supposed to disguise him from the masses who were hearing the missing woman’s story and formulating an opinion.
Ultimately, the show went on, with Affleck wearing a Mets cap in the scene instead.
In an Oct. 2014 interview with The New York Times, Affleck talked about the argument with Fincher while promoting the film, noting, “That was the only fight David and I had, and it was a legitimate fight.”
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“I said, ‘David, I love you, I would do anything for you, but I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can’t. I can’t wear it because it’s going to become a thing, David. I will never hear the end of it. I can’t do it.’ And I couldn’t put it on my head,” he recalled.
“It was an uprising; it was a coup, I rioted,” Affleck continued, adding, “It was a one-man riot against the Yankees.”
Reaching a point of compromise took “a lot of shuttle diplomacy, so much back-and-forth,” but then they settled on the Mets cap.
“This was very Switzerland,” Affleck concluded.
