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Rupert Everett is opening up about his relationship with Madonna. The 65-year-old My Best Friend’s Wedding star reflected on his time in Hollywood, including working on the 2000 film The Next Best Thing with the 66-year-old pop icon, in an interview on How to Fail With Elizabeth Day. “Friendships and failure in Hollywood are very difficult things to keep going,” he began. Keep reading to find out more… He added that the film “was definitely a strain” on their friendship. When asked if they’d ever reconnect, he said: “Well, possibly. I don’t know.” “I think it’s very difficult for her to be in films because everyone has such a preconception. And I don’t know how she could ever be good enough to make people say, ‘Oh, God, that’s really good.’ I think it was great having her in the film,” he went on. The Next Best Thing follows a gay man who inadvertently has a baby with his female best friend (or does he?) – and a movie that he dubbed a “car crash.” “Madonna sold a lot of [home] videos,” he went on to say. “But the film itself didn’t work.” “I think she was touching in the film, too, myself. I haven’t seen it for ages, though. I mean, every time that comes on, I kind of look the other way,” he added. “The sad thing about The Next Best Thing was that it really was my movie,” he said. “It came to me after [1997's] My Best Friend’s Wedding. I was very popular in Hollywood for that year. It was made by Paramount. The movie was greenlit because I was going to be in it.” Rupert partially blamed himself, as he and his writing partner rewrote the script. “I also hired John Schlesinger to be the director, which was, I think, in hindsight, where it was a mistake, because then he wanted me to stay with him and help him prepare the movie and I went off and did another job. That was an example of me not really following the ball exactly, because possibly I could have stayed with him during the preproduction and structured the film as I thought it should have been.” The movie “rapidly flew out of control,” he recalled. “At a certain point, I remember I was fired as the writer, fired as the producer, and the producer said to me, ‘If you want to stay as the actor, you can, but don’t if you don’t want to.’ I should have probably walked away from it at that point and I didn’t.” “Everything went wrong, really, in the making of it. And it completely finished things for me in Hollywood,” he said. “I was very much enjoying my Hollywood revival. And like all idiots, I thought it was just going to go on forever and then it didn’t. So it was difficult to adapt to.” Madonna recently spoke out following the sad news of the death of her younger brother. Listen to the full episode…
