With four days left, after nine months of shooting the sadistic saga, Thurman was asked to do something that made her draw the line. In the famous scene where shes driving the blue convertible to kill Bill the same one she put on Instagram on Thanksgiving she was asked to do the driving herself. But she had been led to believe by a teamster, she says, that the car, which had been reconfigured from a stick shift to an automatic, might not be working that well. She says she insisted that she didnt feel comfortable operating the car and would prefer a stunt person to do it. Producers say they do not recall her objecting.
Quentin came in my trailer and didnt like to hear no, like any director, she says. He was furious because Id cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: I promise you the car is fine. Its a straight piece of road. He persuaded her to do it, and instructed: Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair wont blow the right way and Ill make you do it again. But that was a deathbox that I was in. The seat wasnt screwed down properly. It was a sand road and it was not a straight road. (Tarantino did not respond to requests for comment.)
Thurman then shows me the footage that she says has taken her 15 years to get. Solving my own Nancy Drew mystery, she says. Its from the point of view of a camera mounted to the back of the Karmann Ghia. Its frightening to watch Thurman wrestle with the car, as it drifts off the road and smashes into a palm tree, her contorted torso heaving helplessly until crew members appear in the frame to pull her out of the wreckage. Tarantino leans in and Thurman flashes a relieved smile when she realizes that she can briefly stand.
The steering wheel was at my belly and my legs were jammed under me, she says. I felt this searing pain and thought, Oh my God, Im never going to walk again, she says. When I came back from the hospital in a neck brace with my knees damaged and a large massive egg on my head and a concussion, I wanted to see the car and I was very upset. Quentin and I had an enormous fight, and I accused him of trying to kill me. And he was very angry at that, I guess understandably, because he didnt feel he had tried to kill me.
Even though their marriage was spiraling apart, Hawke immediately left the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky to fly to his wifes side.
I approached Quentin in very serious terms and told him that he had let Uma down as a director and as a friend, he told me. He said he told Tarantino, Hey, man, she is a great actress, not a stunt driver, and you know that. Hawke added that the director was very upset with himself and asked for my forgiveness.
Two weeks after the crash, after trying to see the car and footage of the incident, she had her lawyer send a letter to Miramax, summarizing the event and reserving the right to sue. Miramax offered to show her the footage if she signed a document releasing them of any consequences of my future pain and suffering, she says. She didnt. Thurman says her mind meld with Tarantino was rattled. We were in a terrible fight for years, she explains. We had to then go through promoting the movies. It was all very thin ice. We had a fateful fight at Soho House in New York in 2004 and we were shouting at each other because he wouldnt let me see the footage and he told me that was what they had all decided. Now, so many years after the accident, inspired by the reckoning on violence against women, reliving her own dehumanization to the point of death in Mexico, and furious that there have not been more legal repercussions against Weinstein, Thurman says she handed over the result of her own excavations to the police and ramped up the pressure to cajole the crash footage out of Tarantino. Quentin finally atoned by giving it to me after 15 years, right? she says. Not that it matters now, with my permanently damaged neck and my screwed-up knees. (Tarantino aficionados spy an echo of Thurmans crash in his 2007 movie, Death Proof, produced by Weinstein and starring Thurmans stunt double, Zoë Bell. Young women, including a blond Rose McGowan, die in myriad ways, including by slamming into a windshield.) As she sits by the fire on a second night when we talk until 3 a.m., tears begin to fall down her cheeks. She brushes them away.
When they turned on me after the accident, she says, I went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool. Thurman says that in Kill Bill, Tarantino had done the honors with some of the sadistic flourishes himself, spitting in her face in the scene where Michael Madsen is seen on screen doing it and choking her with a chain in the scene where a teenager named Gogo is on screen doing it.
Harvey assaulted me but that didnt kill me, she says. What really got me about the crash was that it was a cheap shot. I had been through so many rings of fire by that point. I had really always felt a connection to the greater good in my work with Quentin and most of what I allowed to happen to me and what I participated in was kind of like a horrible mud wrestle with a very angry brother. But at least I had some say, you know? She says she didnt feel disempowered by any of it. Until the crash.
Personally, it has taken me 47 years to stop calling people who are mean to you in love with you. It took a long time because I think that as little girls we are conditioned to believe that cruelty and love somehow have a connection and that is like the sort of era that we need to evolve out of.
It's cute and I had no idea Peter Capaldi was in this
