Halle Berry is a screen icon and perhaps best known to many of you for her role as Storm in the X-Men franchise. Like most of the actors involved with those movies, though, 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand was a low point.
Earlier this year, Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn revealed that when he was attached to helm the threequel, 20th Century Fox had created a fake script meant to trick Berry into agreeing to return as Ororo Munroe.
"Hollywood is really political and odd. I went into an executive's office, and I saw a script that was a lot fatter," the director told fans at a convention. "I was like, 'What the hell's this draft?' They said, 'Don't worry about it.'"
After pointing out it was his job to worry about it, he discovered a scene on the first page which featured Storm saving severely dehydrated children in Africa with a thunderstorm.
"That's a pretty cool idea," Vaughn recalled. "So I was like, what's this? They said it was the Halle Berry script. 'She hasn't signed on yet, but this is what she wants it to be. So once she signs on, we'll throw it in the bin.' I said, 'Wow, you're going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress? I'm out of here.' So I quit at that point. I figured I was mincemeat."
The clip of Vaughn recounting that story recently resurfaced on social media and it's prompted a response from Berry herself!
Taking to Instagram, the actor said, "Ya just never know the shady sh*t going on behind ya back!" Thank you Matthew Vaughn for bringing the dark to light."
Hopefully, this revelation won't deter Berry from agreeing to play Storm again in Avengers: Doomsday and/or Avengers: Secret Wars. When we asked her about that last month, she responded, "[Shrugs] You never know. We'll find out! [Laughs]"
Brett Ratner was eventually chosen to direct X-Men: The Last Stand. As for Vaughn, he was eventually convinced to return to the X-Men franchise for 2011's X-Men: First Class. However, while the plan had been for him to also helm the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past, the studio messed him around in a big way.
"Hollywood forgot to tell me, after I wrote the damn thing, that Bryan [Singer] got to direct it first," he revealed, explaining that it prompted him to go and launch the Kingsman franchise instead.
Check out Berry's Instagram post below along with our recent interview with the Oscar-winner.