John Leguizamo Says Patrick Swayze Was ‘Difficult’ To Work With: ‘He Couldn’t Keep Up’
The actors starred alongside Wesley Snipes in the 1995 comedy-drama “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar” — and nearly got into a fistfight on-set.
John Leguizamo says he still remembers how hard it was to work with Patrick Swayze.
The duo co-starred alongside Wesley Snipes in “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! July Newmar” (1995), a comedy about three drag queens on a road trip. When asked if the late great Swayze was the “angel” he’s remembered as, however, Leguizamo kept it real.
“It was difficult working with him,” he recalled Thursday on Sirius XM’s “Radio Andy.”
“[He was,] I don’t know, just neurotic, maybe a tiny bit insecure,” Leguizamo added, when host Andy Cohen asked for details. “And then Wesley and I, we vibed because, you know, we’re people of color and we got each other.”
Leguizamo was already an established comedian when he was cast in the part, which he said Thursday he “rewrote” because “that role was nothing.” While that creativity landed him his first Golden Globe nomination, Leguizamo said it made Swayze “mad and upset” on set.
“I’m also an improviser, and [Swayze] didn’t like that,” Leguizamo said. “He couldn’t keep up with it. He’d be like, ‘Are you gonna say a line like that?’ I’d go, ‘You know me. I’m gonna do me. I’m gonna just keep making up lines,’” Leguizamo recalled. “He goes, ‘Well, can you just say the line the way it is?’ I go, ‘I can’t,’ and the director didn’t want me to.”
Swayze revealed in his 2009 memoir, “The Time of My Life,” that this bickering began as early as rehearsals for the film. He recalled Leguizamo’s “hyperactive” horseplay driving him so “crazy” that he screamed at his energetic co-star to “shut the fuck up for once.”
The actors nearly got into a bona fide fistfight until they realized they were in costume.
“John and I were wearing stocking caps, makeup and eyelashes, and garter belts — we must have looked ridiculous, a couple of tough guys ready to go at each other while wearing panty hose,” wrote Swayze in his memoir.
“I love John, and I love that he went at me with fists up and makeup on,” he continued. “Not many guys would have done that, and though it didn’t seem funny at the time, it sure does now.”
Swayze died at 57 years old, two weeks before his memoir hit shelves, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Leguizamo paid tribute in a statement to Entertainment Weekly at the time and wrote: “It’s tough to see such a young spirit and positive individual leave us.
“Why is it always the good ones that are taken too soon?”
