Guy Pearce says Warner Bros. exec forced Christopher Nolan to stop working with him

Christopher Nolan is known for sticking with actors he likes, with folks like Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy all appearing in multiple outings for the director across decades. Which makes it a little confusing that the star of Nolan’s first big breakout flick has never worked with him again—or maybe not that confusing, for Guy Pearce himself. Pearce (who’s currently promoting The Brutalist) says he knows exactly why he never reunited with his Memento director: A Warner Bros. executive deliberately blocked him from appearing in any of Nolan’s later movies.

Pearce starred in Nolan’s second feature (after 1998’s Following), the first to earn the director widespread acclaim. The actor gives a fine performance in the film, playing a man incapable of forming new memories; his continued befuddlement (and occasional rage) help keep the film grounded even as its unconventional structure deliberately works to unsettle audiences. And Nolan almost certainly would have worked with Pearce again… if not for an unnamed Warner Bros. exec who vetoed the whole concept. “There was an executive at Warner Bros.,” Pearce told Vanity Fair in an interview this week, “Who quite openly said to my agent, ‘I don’t get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to get Guy Pearce. I’m never going to employ Guy Pearce.’” And since Nolan was a WB loyalist for many years—right up until the studio royally pissed him off with its treatment of his time travel action movie Tenet a couple of years ago—that “Meant I could never work with Chris.”

Nolan tried, apparently: Pearce says the director approached him about a part in The Prestige, and flew him out to London to read for Batman Begins‘ Ra’s al Ghul, the character ultimately played by Liam Neeson in the 2005 film. “I think it was decided on my flight that I wasn’t going to be in the movie. So I get there and Chris is like ‘Hey, you want to see the Batmobile and get dinner?’” In any case, Pearce remains an admirer of Nolan’s—as he is of basically everyone he’s worked with over the years, with one notable exception. The Vanity Fair profile has a long-ish section where interviewer Jordan Hoffman asks Pearce about his many co-stars, and gets gushing answers about Robert Downey Jr., Kate Winslet, Robert Pattinson, Russell Crowe, Todd Haynes, Paul Rudd, and more. Then: “Did you have a good experience working with Keven Spacey?” (The pair starred, with Crowe, in L.A. Confidential.) The otherwise effusive Pearce: “No.”

Anyway, as the interview itself notes, Nolan’s no longer in the Warner Bros. camp, having made both Oppenheimer, and his mysterious next movie—which was already feeling like a bit of a Nolan alumni reunion—at Universal. To quote Pearce: “So now my time has come!”