WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • Sylvester Stallone claims tension with Richard Gere began during auditions for the 1974 film “The Lords of Flatbush.”
  • Stallone says he threatened to knock Gere’s teeth out after an aggressive ad lib exercise.
  • A later dispute involving spilled chicken grease allegedly ended with director Stephen F Verona separating the actors.
  • Gere ultimately left the production and was replaced by Perry King.

Sylvester Stallone has revealed just how ugly his relationship with Richard Gere became while the pair worked on the 1974 film “The Lords of Flatbush.”

In his new memoir, “The Steps,” Stallone claims their hostility began during auditions and escalated into a physical confrontation during filming, as reported by Page Six.

According to Stallone, the two actors did not get along from the beginning. Their early friction surfaced during an audition exercise in which they disagreed over an ad lib session, setting the stage for an increasingly tense working relationship.

Stallone alleged that Gere became physical during the exercise. “Gere grabbed my T-shirt and his fingernails dug into my skin,” he wrote while recalling the moment their conflict began to intensify.

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“I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take. He couldn’t have known, but Gere had begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside me,” Stallone continued in the memoir.

The actor then approached director Stephen F. Verona and asked whether he could ad lib his response. Stallone wanted permission to react as he said he would if somebody treated him that way during a confrontation in real life.

His proposed response was anything but restrained. When Stallone explained that he would knock Gere’s teeth out, Verona allegedly answered with a direct request: “Please don’t.”

The disagreement during auditions was only the beginning, according to Stallone’s account. The 80-year-old “Rocky” icon wrote that his already troubled relationship with Gere deteriorated further once filming was underway.

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The most explosive encounter allegedly erupted during a lunch break after Gere spilled chicken grease on Stallone. Stallone said the spill prompted him to elbow Gere, leave the car and pull his fellow actor from the back seat.

“A stream of chicken grease spilled off the foil paper onto my leg. I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat,” Stallone recalled.

Gere purportedly tried to stop the situation from becoming physical. “Hey, man, I don’t want to get physical,” the “Pretty Woman” actor allegedly pleaded in what Stallone described in his memoir as a “thin voice.”

Stallone claimed he had no intention of letting the confrontation end there. “Too late…,” he recalled replying before Verona stepped between the actors and prevented the clash from continuing.

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The intervention made the severity of the conflict impossible to ignore, according to Stallone. “It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working,” he wrote. “One of us had to go.”

Gere ultimately left the production and was replaced by actor Perry King. Page Six contacted Gere’s representative for comment regarding Stallone’s recollections of their turbulent experience making the film.

Verona and Martin Davidson directed “The Lords of Flatbush,” which follows a group of street teenagers wearing leather jackets in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The main cast includes Stallone, King, Paul Mace, and Henry Winkler.

Stallone’s memoir presents the confrontation as the culmination of tension that had existed since the audition process.

What began with a disputed acting exercise allegedly grew into threats, a grease-soaked lunch break and a physical struggle serious enough to require the director’s intervention.

The actor’s account also places Verona at the center of both major incidents. The director first discouraged Stallone from acting on his threat during the audition and later physically positioned himself in front of Gere when the lunch break confrontation erupted.

Neither actor remained alongside the other in the completed production after Gere’s replacement. Stallone’s version of their bitter clash now appears in “The Steps,” which is available wherever books are sold.

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