Redmayne only had a passing knowledge of Monroe’s life, yet was so wrapped up in Clark’s story that he really wanted to do something special with “My Week With Marilyn.” Unfortunately, since convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein was an executive producer, he could be found walking around the film’s set, which seriously put Redmayne on edge.

While participating in a Vanity Fair retrospective about his career, Redmayne talked about how Weinstein got in his head:

“I remember he told me, on day one, to walk with him. He said, ‘Walk me.’ And I was terrified. And he sort of told me that basically he didn’t want me in the movie, and that I was moving my face too much. Um, so my sort of overwhelming memory of that film is just trying not to move my face, which is … Explains quite a lot of the performance.”

Leave it to one of the industry’s most destructive forces to be a prick to an actor on their first day. The only good thing Weinstein ever did was go away on account of his decades-long damage finally catching up to him. There’s also something so disgusting about an industry-wide abuser having any semblance of power regarding a story that involves Monroe. Redmayne would get the last laugh, however, as he went on to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards for “The Theory of Everything.”

“My Week With Marilyn” is currently streaming on HBO Max.