Courtney Love Says She Was Fired From ‘Fight Club’ After Telling Brad Pitt He Couldn’t Play Kurt Cobain in Movie

In an alternate universe, Courtney Love might have been in David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club.

But according to the singer, she got fired from the film after she had a disagreement with Brad Pitt. 

“I get the role, so the lawyers have called the lawyers—this is my role,” she told Marc Maron on a recent episode of his WTF podcast.“We’d done all these table reads, I’d gone to work privately with David [Fincher], and I get this phone call and it’s from Gus Van Sant, and Gus is having lunch with Brad Pitt… He goes, ‘Brad really wants to do a movie about music.’”

That’s when Van Sant offered the idea of doing a movie about Kurt Cobain, who passed away in 1994.

“It was like the hellmouth opened, oh my God, ‘We wanna do it about Kurt!’ And 22 years later I still kick myself for not having the shark instinct to be like, ‘Sure,’ and fuck ‘em later. I went nuclear. ‘I don’t do Faust, who the fuck do you think you are?!’”

Edward Norton, who also stars in the film, and Love were dating back then, and the news tore him up, with Love saying he was “sobbing” and particularly upset because “his mother had just died.” He told her at the time, “‘I don’t have the power!’”

According to Love, she then received a call from Fincher who fired her. “My landline rang and it was David Fincher. I knew it was gonna be him,” she said. “And yeah, he fired me because I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt.” She also added that while she’s still never seen Fight Club, Helena Bonham Carter—who ended up playing Marla—is a “genius.”

Pitt still attempted to make a movie about Cobain, which Love never agreed to. Van Sant tried to do the same with the 2005 film Last Days, though, due to legal issues, he couldn’t actually name the character after the late Nirvana musician or use exact details from his life.

Listen to Courtney Love’s episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast below.