Richard E Grant Films got a fresh jolt when Grant said Danny Aiello “completely lost the plot” on the set of Pret-a-Porter and offended co-stars during one scene. He called the 1994 film terrible, saying it had no structure and “was a car crash as a result.”
Grant said the disruption centered on a scene where Sophia Loren was supposed to have fainted. Aiello, he recalled, pushed into the moment with, “I’ll give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!” He also said Aiello directed abuse at Bacall and then turned on Rupert Everett for being English.
Pret-a-Porter and Paris
Pret-a-Porter was a Robert Altman comedy-drama set around figures from the fashion industry arriving in Paris for fashion week. Grant’s recollection gives the film a second life as more than a misfire: it also reads like an ensemble set where the structure was loose enough for one actor to seize control of a scene and derail it in front of the cast.
The film also brought together Anouk Aimée, Marcello Mastroianni, Kim Basinger, Stephen Rea, Julia Roberts, Forest Whitaker and Teri Garr. Against that lineup, Grant’s account matters because it shows the fallout was not private grumbling; it was castwide enough that, in his words, “None of the cast would talk to Danny after that; they sent him to Coventry.”
Aiello after 2019
Aiello died in December 2019 at the age of 86, which makes Grant’s account part of the longer afterlife of a film that already carries a reputation for chaos. Grant also repeated that the production had “no structure,” a blunt judgment that sits awkwardly beside the scale of the cast and the film’s Altman pedigree.
Grant’s latest interview does more than reopen an old argument about Pret-a-Porter. It connects a remembered on-set blowup to the kind of ensemble production where one actor’s behaviour can ripple through the whole day’s work, and it lands just as Grant says he will appear on the new series of Celebrity Traitors.
Celebrity Traitors and Grant
For readers tracking Richard E Grant Films, the immediate takeaway is simple: Grant is still making headlines by turning film history into live commentary, and he is doing it with specific names, specific insults and one scene that he says became “one insane day.” The story is less about nostalgia than about how one bad day on a set can outlast the film itself.
