Miles Teller clarifies his Divergent shade, ends up reiterating his comments
Last week, I covered Miles Teller’s W Magazine interview. He sort of threw some shade on the Divergent franchise, which oh-by-the-way he’s still contractually obligated for the sequels. He told W that he was “feeling dead inside” during filming of Divergent and “I didn’t have an interesting part, and I’d taken the film for business reasons: It was the first movie I’d done that was going to have an international audience. I called my agent and said, ‘This sucks.’” The backlash against him happened very quickly, and to his credit, he reacted within the same news cycle. He tweeted:
I've never done a movie for "business" reasons. I'm proud to be a part of Divergent franchise and love all of Peter's Princesses
— Miles Teller (@Miles_Teller) September 24, 2014
His rep also went around issuing denials and clarifications. All of this has come about while Miles is trying to promote Whiplash, the little indie film that could walk away with a few Oscar nominations. Miles is incredibly proud of Whiplash, so it’s kind of funny/sad that for the past week, he’s had to answer endless questions about how much he hates Divergent. When he sat down with HuffPo Live yesterday, he got questions about it again!! You can see the video here.
One thing is for sure: Miles Teller is nothing like his rude Divergent character Peter. The actor cleared up his controversial comments that he felt “dead inside” while filming Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA film adaptation during an interview with HuffPost Live on Tuesday, Sept. 30.
“I think we talked on the phone for an hour, and if the conversation was transcribed I don’t think it would have been framed the way it was framed,” Teller, 27, explained of his conversation with W magazine.
“I’ve been offered good money to do absolutely terrible scripts that I haven’t done. I guess the business reasons for me [to join Divergent] — it was a smaller part acting wise — but it would give me an opportunity to be in a film that would be seen internationally,” he continued. “A big reason why I did the film was working with Shailene [Woodley] and director [Neil Burger].”
Teller also explained how his hectic schedule is what made him feel so worn down during production. The actor had just worked on four films back-to-back, and only had a month inbetween his comedy That Awkward Moment before joining Woodley in Chicago for four months. “I was just really burnt out,” he said.
So, basically, he wasn’t misquoted at all. He felt burnt out, dead inside (if you will) and he did the film because he thought it would give him more name-recognition overseas. I love that he can’t even really lie about it. What’s the big deal anyway? I mean, it’s rude and unprofessional to tell the truth about a Hunger Games-ripoff but at the end of the day…I don’t know, it’s not a career-destroyer or anything.
Miles was also on the Tonight Show two nights ago. Fallon didn’t ask him about his Divergent comments, thank God. You can see part of the interview here.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.
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