Uma Thurman Almost Died During a ‘Kill Bill’ Stunt Quentin Tarantino Made Her Perform: ‘I Accused Him of Trying to Kill Me’
Harvey Weinstein isn’t the only one who’s wronged Uma Thurman. In the same New York Times interview in which she accuses the disgraced former executive of sexual assault, Thurman says that she almost died while making “Kill Bill” after Quentin Tarantino persuaded her to drive a stunt car against her wishes — a process she describes as “dehumanization to the point of death.”
“Quentin came in my trailer and didn’t like to hear no, like any director,” Thurman says in the interview. “He was furious because I’d cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: ‘I promise you the car is fine. It’s a straight piece of road. Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won’t blow the right way and I’ll make you do it again.’ But that was a deathbox that I was in. The seat wasn’t screwed down properly. It was a sand road and it was not a straight road.”
She was right to be worried: The car crashed into a tree and she was badly injured. “The steering wheel was at my belly and my legs were jammed under me,” she recalls. “I felt this searing pain and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m 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 didn’t feel he had tried to kill me.”
The New York Times has footage of the crash, which Thurman fought to see for years. It wasn’t until late last year that she was finally allowed to.
“Harvey assaulted me but that didn’t kill me,” she adds. “What really got me about the crash was that it was a cheap shot.” It damaged her relationship with Tarantino for years, and it sounds as though she hasn’t fully recovered. Read the full story here.
