Eva Green was so concerned she would have to make what she had described as a career-wrecking B-movie that she discussed pretending she had been hospitalised in order to avoid turning up, a court has heard.
New detail of Green’s antipathy towards a failed multimillion-pound sci-fi film, A Patriot, at the centre of a legal battle between her and a production company emerged in freshly disclosed WhatsApp messages from the actor.
In a message in September 2019, she asked her agent: “IF they come back to you and say they are going to go ahead with the movie, what can we say…? Could we say this situation has made me ill over the weekend? We could say I had to go to hospital as I had a serious rash all over my body?”
Green then asked her agent if a doctor might help, the high court in London was told.
The message was referred to during closing arguments on Tuesday by legal counsel for the production company, White Lantern Films.
Max Mallin KC said Green was so concerned about what would happen if called upon to perform that she suggested her agent, Charles Collier, “invent a story about Ms Green being hospitalised”.
In written submissions, Mallin said Green also “appeared to contemplate faking a broken arm” to avoid performing.
Green is suing White Lantern Films and SMC Speciality finance for a $1m (£807,000) fee she says is owed over the collapse of the planned independent film. The two companies are countersuing, alleging that she pulled out of and breached her contract in relation to the dystopian thriller.
Their evidence has included vituperative WhatsApp exchanges with her agent and a writer, in which the actor referred to a lead producer, Jake Seal, and his colleague Terry Bird as, respectively, “pure vomit” and “a fucking moron”.
When Green herself gave evidence, she insisted she would have honoured her contract and made what she described as a “shitty B-movie” despite her deep concerns about production values and corners being cut.
The closing submission on Tuesday on behalf of White Lantern Films claimed that Green’s evidence in January was “unconvincing and at times appeared to be rehearsed”.
In closing arguments on Green’s behalf, her lawyers said: “EG is a professional actor who has not breached a contract in a 20-year career. She had been advised by Mr Collier as to the consequences – namely a huge claim for damages such as that which she has had to confront. Moreover, such a course would be career threatening.”
Production on the film was abandoned in October 2019 amid funding difficulties and an acrimonious fallout between those involved as negotiations to salvage the production came to nothing.
Green has said she had been humiliated by the release of the private WhatsApp messages, including her lamentation about being “obliged to take [the producer’s] shitty peasant crew members from Hampshire” after the location was switched from Ireland. She insisted when she gave evidence in January that this was a reference to her desire to work with a “quality” crew paid standard rates.
Green’s barrister, Edmund Cullen KC, previously told the court that the case was “designed to paint my client as a diva to win headlines and damage her reputation”.
A central discussion point of the case has been Green’s view of Seal, and Mallin said on Tuesday that it was clear from evidence that she was refusing to perform because of the control held by that producer.
Mallin told the court that the categorical nature of Green’s refusal to perform at Black Hangar, a Hampshire studio owned by Seal and to where production had been switched from Green’s preferred location of Ireland, had been further evidenced by the disclosure of more messages.
Green’s lawyers said in their closing submission that the temperature of those negotiations “and the temperature of the WhatsApp exchanges” was raised by the hard line taken at the outset by the financiers.
Judgment is expected to be handed down at a later date.
