Actress, Grammy-nominated musician, and widow of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, has asserted that she was initially going to be cast in David Fincher’s Fight Club as the glib and nihilistic Marla Singer. Helena Bonham Carter eventually played the character before Pitt allegedly got her fired for refusing to let Pitt portray Kurt.
Love elaborated that when Pitt first came to her with the idea of playing Cobain — who committed suicide in 1994 — she “went nuclear.” And that all these years later, she wishes she’d instead embraced “the shark instinct” — letting Pitt think she’d go along with the idea of him portraying Cobain until she could get through production on Fight Club. Love elaborated that while she was dating Pitt’s Fight Club co-star Edward Norton at the time of her alleged firing, Norton told her he didn’t “have the power” to get her re-hired.
According to Deadline,” While Pitt’s reps haven’t returned a request for comment, a source close to the film tells us: “Nearly twenty-five years ago, Courtney Love auditioned for a role in Fight Club, a role she was never offered at any point. You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get. It’s common knowledge that roles are not decided by other actors but by the director.”
Love stated in a conversation with comedian Marc Maron on his popular podcast “WTF” that Pitt has been interested in making a Cobain-centric film since 1996 — and approached her about producing a film on Cobain through his company Plan B as recently as 2020. She was not at all interested in hearing Pitt out. “I did a Zoom with him, and I stuck up for myself. I said, ‘Listen, man. I don’t know that I trust you, and I don’t know that your movies are for profit,’” she shared. “‘They’re really good social justice movies, but…if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad,’” clearly not trusting Pitt to do Kurt Cobain justice.
Love followed up by saying she’s not entirely against the idea of making a Kurt Cobain-centered biopic with the right people at the helm. in her words, “like Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy at Warner Bros.” she said, “Because they know how to make a f***ing movie.
No solid evidence of this exchange has been made public at this time.