Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier paid tribute to Patrick Stewart ahead of a Los Angeles screening of the film on Friday, recalling how the sci-fi icon “just swooped down, nosedived into our cruddy ass movie and saved us.”
Celebrating the film’s 10th anniversary, Saulnier addressed the crowd and noted Stewart’s death at 86.
“Who’s sad as fuck we lost Patrick Stewart yesterday? Me,” he said in a video posted on the Film Updates X account. “I came here to shamelessly promote Slayground, but instead, I’m just gonna celebrate Patrick Stewart. He had no business doing this movie. He every option to do otherwise.”
The director remembered how production on Green Room was “at the point of no return, building sets, and under the gun without Darcy,” noting that the lead character of Darcy Banker had not yet been cast. However, that’s when the Star Trek star came in.
“We’re fucked, and we were close to shutting down. And Patrick Stewart, out of the blue, sort of expressed interest in the project,” Saulnier said. “And in a whirlwind, about a week later, I was on the phone with him. I left the stage [thinking,] ‘Maybe we’re gonna have to break down the sets and shut the whole movie down.’ Instead, this dude came out of nowhere, from way above our sort of zone, and just swooped down, nosedived into our cruddy ass movie and saved us, and said yes. And the movie was instantly greenlit.”
“We moved forward, and I thank him for just taking that leap and making Green Room a thing,” he added. “Patrick Stewart is why I still can make movies. He saved the day. Too good to be true.”
The Rebel Ridge director remembered Stewart as a “fucking sweetheart, true gentleman, [who was a] very kind leader to our whole cast.” He also shared a story about how one day, the actor came to him and said he “wanted to add a little something” to a scene.
“I was like, ‘What is it, Patrick?’ He’s like, ‘Well, during this one part of the scene, when the camera’s coming through there, I’d like to say, fuck!’ And I was like, ‘And?’ ‘Just fuck.’ I was like. ‘Permission granted, sir,’” Saulnier recounted. “And I just knew that he was completely aligned with the film, its aesthetic, its intentions and with me as a filmmaker, and it was just this lovely, lovely thing.”
Stewart died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia,” longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak announced. After his death, his former co-stars and Hollywood notables shared an outpouring of tributes.
Among those who have paid homage to the X-Men star are Ian McKellen, Kevin Feige, William Shatner, Seth MacFarlane, Hugh Jackman, Minnie Driver, Rebecca Romijn, Halle Berry and James Marsden, among many others.
