James McAvoy has claimed that he was bullied by a co-star on the set of HBO's Band of Brothers, an experience he described as happening on his first day as a professional actor. The 47-year-old actor made the remarks during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, after being shown a picture of the cast.
Refusing to Name the Alleged Bully
During the show, McAvoy was shown a photograph featuring Frank John Hughes, Ross McCall, Neal McDonough, Philip Barantini, Adam James, Donnie Wahlberg, Kirk Acevedo, and Scott Grimes. He declined to identify the actor he alleged had bullied him, but he did confirm that the person was not David Schwimmer, who was not in the picture. "Is he in there?" McAvoy asked, adding: "No, I don't think he is in there – ah, yeah, he is."
McAvoy, who played Private First Class James W. Miller in the fourth episode, titled Replacements, described the incident in detail. He told Andy Cohen: "On my first day on set, there was a ton of actors, it was one of those scenes with everybody in it, and we're all at a bar, I had a scene. And all these guys were in it for nine months, 10 months, and they get one line in one episode and one line 10 episodes later. They were all p****ed. I come in for one episode, and I've got an arc and scenes, I've got tonnes of lines."
Positive Moments Amid the Negativity
McAvoy went on to say: "So, one of the guys in that picture decided to bully me, on my first day as a professional actor out of acting school. He got him and his buddies to just stand pointing at me and laughing at me for, like, three minutes." Despite this, he noted that he had positive experiences on set, crediting Dexter Fletcher and Scottish actor Robin Laing for taking him aside and saying, "Come hang with us, man."
Reflecting on his time on the show, McAvoy said: "I'd say apart from that day [my Band of Brothers experience] was a nine. But that day, it felt like a two." His character, who was 20, was killed by an enemy shell in the Netherlands on September 20, 1944.
Previous Health Scare
This is not the only difficult experience McAvoy has faced in his career. While filming Glass, the sequel to Split, he suffered a lung puncture after a biopsy was "botched." He said on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast: "I had a lung puncture because they saw a shadow in my lung, so they wanted to biopsy it to see if it was cancer, which it wasn't, which was great. But that was botched, and I nearly died. I was at home two days later, my lungs just collapsed in bed one night, and I was on my own as well, so it was crazy."
The Mirror has approached representatives for Ross McCall, Neal McDonough, Philip Barantini, Adam James, Donnie Wahlberg, Kirk Acevedo, and Scott Grimes. Frank John Hughes could not be approached.
