- A moderator asked Michelle Pfeiffer about her weight while filming "Scarface."
- The audience at the event booed.
- Pfeiffer pointed out that her character was a cocaine addict and said she struggled with maintaining the right weight during filming.
- The moderator may have been trying to make a point about body image issues — but it didn't go over well with the audience.
A Tribeca Film Festival panel in New York City that reunited the main cast of "Scarface" for the movie's 35th anniversary Thursday night went off the rails when the moderator asked Michelle Pfeiffer about her weight during the movie.
"As the father of a daughter, I’m concerned about body image," the moderator, journalist Jesse Kornbluth, said during the panel, which INSIDER attended. "The preparation for this film — what did you weigh?"
The audience loudly booed. "Why do you need to know?" one member yelled.
"No no no, this is not the question you think it is," Kornbluth continued.
After the booing subsided, Pfeiffer pointed out that her character was a cocaine addict.
"Well, OK. I don’t know. But I was playing a cocaine addict," Pfeiffer said.
Kornbluth interrupted Pfeiffer's response and say "to my point," indicating his question may have been a way of expressing concern about unhealthy body images in movies.
"Yeah. So that was part of the physicality of that part, which you have to consider," Pfeiffer continued.
Pfeiffer said the shooting period for the movie went much longer than planned, which made it hard to manage her weight in accordance with the script.
"The movie was only supposed to be a three-month, four-month shoot. And of course I tried to time it so that as the movie went on, I became thinner and thinner and more emaciated," Pfeiffer said. "The problem was, the movie went six months, eight. I was starving by the end of it."
The panel reunion also featured stars Al Pacino and Steven Bauer, as well as director Brian De Palma.
On Twitter, attendees of the Q&A were incensed about why Kornbluth needed to ask about Pfeiffer's weight in the first place.
The SCARFACE moderator just “as the father of a daughter”-ed Michelle Pfeiffer and then asked her how much she weighed before she started filming and half the audience yelled “NOO NOOO NOOO!” #Tribeca2018
— Kate Erbland (@katerbland) April 20, 2018
Oh hey just plugged in my camera and look: Michelle Pfeiffer reacting to the bad question, in three photos pic.twitter.com/BVHO9Pvqym
— Jason Bailey (@jasondashbailey) April 20, 2018
Here's a question he could've asked: Pfeiffer paid her own way from LA to NY to audition for Scarface after Melanie Griffith + Kim Basinger turned it down. Why did she want the role so badly? What did she do in her audition? At the time, Pacino wanted Glenn Close. Did she know?
— Rebecca Keegan (@ThatRebecca) April 20, 2018
Michelle Pfeiffer has been asked two questions so far: What did she tell her kids about all the swear words and how much did she weigh during production 🙃 #Tribeca2018pic.twitter.com/3Uo7rlKuFX
— hunter harris (@hunteryharris) April 20, 2018
he protested with “this isn’t the question you think it is!!!” but there was no follow-up so honestly i think it was exactly the question we thought it was??? https://t.co/BWrfjfA0DI
— karen han (@karenyhan) April 20, 2018
Pfeiffer said that the crew worried about her weight while filming the movie.
"The one scene, which was the end of the film, where I need to be my thinnest, it was [scheduled for] next week, then it was next week, then it was next week," Pfeiffer said. "I literally had members of the crew because they were worried about me and how thin I was getting. I think I was living on tomato soup and Marlboros."
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