“Marriage Story” actor Adam Driver walked out of a taping of NPR’s “Fresh Air” with host Terry Gross earlier this month after a clip of him singing from the Netflix film was played during his interview.
“We don’t really understand why he left,” the program’s executive producer Danny Miller said in a statement. “We were looking forward to the interview — Terry thinks he’s a terrific actor, he was a great guest when he was on (“Fresh Air”) in 2015 — so we were disappointed that we didn’t have a new interview to share with our listeners about ‘Marriage Story.’”
The clip that was played comes late in the Netflix movie when Driver’s character sings Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” in a karaoke bar.
Ironically, Driver had told “Fresh Air” about his apprehension hearing himself back in 2015. “Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it,” Driver said at the time. “And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change.”
Knowing this, Driver was invited to remove his headphones while the “Marriage Story” clip played and then an engineer would cue the actor when it was over to continue the interview.
“But this time around, after the clip concluded we were informed by our engineer in NY that he had walked out of the studio, and then left the building,” Miller added. “We still don’t understand why Adam Driver chose to leave the interview at that point.”
Back in October, Driver told New York magazine about similar situations: He hid in the green room during a screening of “BlacKkKlansman” and got nauseous during the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” premiere.
The actor has had a busy promotional tour schedule between November’s “The Report” on Amazon, “Marriage Story” on Netflix and Disney’s “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker,” which opens Friday.
Driver did attend the premiere of “Rise of Skywalker” on Tuesday night in Hollywood and even took the stage with his co-stars. No word on whether he stayed in the audience during the screening.
The Daily Beast was first to report the story.