The headline of Madonna’s career is of course the music, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, she had a bit of a directorial career going. Her first movie was 2008’s Filth And Wisdom, which she followed in 2011 with WE. Neither film was well-received critically and WE in particular was a box office bomb. Some of the latter film’s cast would go on do to more esteemed work, though, like Stranger Things favorite David Harbour. He guested on Jimmy Kimmel Live! yesterday (November 30) and admitted that even while he was making WE, he knew it probably wasn’t going to be very good.
Kimmel asked if being directed by Madonna was a “positive experience” and Harbour responded, “She is a genius in many realms. The film was not a terrific movie.” Kimmel followed up by asking if Harbour could sense that while working on it, and he answered, “Yeah. Yeah, we had some inkling.” He did note, though, that he thought Madonna did a terrific job with the movie’s dance sequences.
He also spoke about how he subtly rebelled against Madonna during production: “She wanted everyone to call her ‘M’ at the time, but I’m just like a punk kid, and I just remember being so excited and so cocky that I just kept going, like… she was like, ‘David, do you want to do it with a British accent’ or something, and I was like, ‘I don’t know, Madonna.’”
Check out Harbour’s full interview above.