Hollywood is a tough place, full of backstabbing, double-dealing, pile-climbing, and all the other symptoms of a world full of A-listers trying to push everybody else down into the Bs. Sometimes though, people get really nasty, as demonstrated in a new Esquire profile on Josh Brolin, in which he reveals that James Cameron once called him “names” for refusing to be in his Avatar sequels.
“If I don’t want to do Avatar,” Brolin said, “I’m not going to do Avatar. James Cameron’s fucking calling me this name and that name. Whatever.” Brolin failed to elaborate on which names, exactly, Cameron slapped him with, although we have to assume they weren’t “Josh” or “Mr. B.” Still, you don’t get to be Josh Brolin without developing a healthy resistance to sticks, stones, or mean labels from Oscar-winning directors: “If James Cameron came to me and said, ‘Hey, man, why’d you say that?’ I’d go, ‘Because it happened,’” Brolin added. We can only hope Cameron will stop bullying him some time soon, and that that tendency toward straight-shootin’ will serve him well in his role as the gun-toting Cable in Deadpool 2.