Director Brett Ratner is doing a lot of apologizing.
Last week in an interview for Attack Of The Show for G4, he said of actress Olivia Munn, "I banged her a few times, but forgot her." Then, on Friday, at The Arclight Theater, he used a homophobic slur at a Q&A for his premiering film "Tower Heist."
Ratner also said of Munn in his G4 interview: "I used to date Olivia Munn.. when she was Lisa. That was the problem. She wasn't Asian back then," reports Entertainment Weekly.
While Munn has not responded publicly to Ratner's claims, her sister sure didn't mind taking to Twitter to get the word out:
@NotetoSelfExp: "PussInBoots takes #1 & TowerHeist underperforms... Any minute now, it's gonna try 2 get us to believe it banged Puss and forgot about it."
Munn re-tweeted, as did many others, and it seems to have worked.
A person with direct knowledge of the matter tells HuffPost that Rattner called Munn last night to personally apologize. This person requested anonymity out of respect for the parties involved. This morning on Howard Stern, Rattner admitted to lying about sleeping with the actress (listen in the audio clip above). Munn has not issued a public statement about the matter.
During the Howard Stern interview, Stern asked Ratner, "Is she an actress? I've never even heard of her." Munn is on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and just finished filming Steven Soderbergh's film "Magic Mike." She will also soon be seen in Aaron Sorkin's new pilot "More as This Story Develops."
The Wrap reports that Ratner's homophobic comment at Friday's Q&A went a little something like this (transcription taken from a video of the Q&A online that has since been taken down):
Question: So you get this entire group of actors together -- what was rehearsal like?
Brett Ratner's Answer: Rehearsal? What's that? Rehearsal's for fags. Rehearsal. Not much. A lot of prep, preparation, complex action sequences, visual effects. Storyboards, animatics. The process was I made the actors stick to the script. And they wanted to, because the script was great.
HuffPost Gay Voices has more to say on the matter:
The gaffe, made during a Q&A session following a "Tower Heist" screening, seemed questionable even for the sharp-tongued Ratner, who is the producer of this year's Oscar telecast and is said to be in talks to direct an adaptation of the Broadway musical "Wicked." One audience member is said to have been so upset by the reference that they immediately left the session.
Deadline's Mike Flemming added, "I've known Ratner for years, and he has a quality of wanting to please, be it making his actors happy or delivering a dishy interview that a host like Stern is after. Ratner's priority for the next few months should be to put on a good show, and stop embarrassing the Academy."