Charlie Hunnam is clearly traumatized from the experience of joining Fifty Shades of Grey as its lead, Christian Grey, then stepping down and making way for Jamie Dornan to take over.
In a new interview with V Man, he recalled the conversation he had with director Sam Taylor-Johnson when he had to give her the bad news and slammed misconceptions that he left the project because he was uncomfortable with its explicit sexual nature.
At the time he announced he was dropping out, he blamed his hectic work schedule.
He now says he had promised Guillermo Del Toro that he would do Crimson Peak, and he overstretched himself.
"I'd given Guillermo my word, over a year before, that I was going to do this film," he said. "People were saying, 'Are you crazy? Guillermo still has got four months to recast, it's the fourth lead, you can go and do this [instead].' I said, 'I can't. He's my friend.' "
Hunnam called making the decision “heartbreaking,” adding, "It was the worst professional experience of my life. It was the most emotionally destructive and difficult thing that I've ever had to deal with professionally."
When he called Taylor-Johnson to tell her, he said they “both cried our eyes out on the phone for 20 minutes.”
He also wanted to make it clear he didn’t leave the film because “I got really cold feet and got scared of the explicit nature of the sexuality of the piece."
image via Peter West/ACE/INFphoto.com