Quentin Tarantino Speaks Out After Uma Thurman Slams Him For ‘Kill Bill’ Injuries [FOOTAGE]

Just days after Uma Thurman went public to The New York Times with her account of fallen producer Harvey Weinstein’s attempts to sexually assault her and Quentin Tarantino putting her in danger on the set of Kill Bill, Deadline published a Q&A with Tarantino in which the director explained his side of the story.

Last week, Thurman told The New York Times that she had once told Tarantino about Weinstein’s unwanted advances toward her, and when she reminded him of the incident before shooting for Kill Bill began, Tarantino confronted Weinstein, who gave what Thurman called a “half-assed apology.”

Her trouble with Tarantino began when he asked her to do a scene in which she had to drive a blue convertible. Someone tipped her off that the convertible may not be working well, and when she protested against doing the scene, she said Tarantino persuaded her that the car was fine, and convinced her to shoot the scene.

The car crashed during the scene, and Thurman was taken to the hospital, thinking she’d never walk again. She didn’t have access to the footage of her crash until recently, and she published it on her Instagram account.

“I post this clip to memorialize it’s full exposure in the nyt by Maureen Dowd. The circumstances of this event were negligent to the point of criminality. I do not believe though with malicious intent,” the actress captioned the video. “Quentin Tarantino, was deeply regretful and remains remorseful about this sorry event, and gave me the footage years later so I could expose it and let it see the light of day, regardless of it most likely being an event for which justice will never be possible. He also did so with full knowledge it could cause him personal harm, and I am proud of him for doing the right thing and for his courage. THE COVER UP after the fact is UNFORGIVABLE. For this I hold Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein solely responsible. They lied, destroyed evidence, and continue to lie about the permanent harm they caused and then chose to suppress. The cover up did have malicious intent, and shame on these three for all eternity. CAA never sent anyone to Mexico. I hope they look after other clients more respectfully if they in fact want to do the job for which they take money with any decency.”

i post this clip to memorialize it’s full exposure in the nyt by Maureen Dowd. the circumstances of this event were negligent to the point of criminality. i do not believe though with malicious intent. Quentin Tarantino, was deeply regretful and remains remorseful about this sorry event, and gave me the footage years later so i could expose it and let it see the light of day, regardless of it most likely being an event for which justice will never be possible. he also did so with full knowledge it could cause him personal harm, and i am proud of him for doing the right thing and for his courage. THE COVER UP after the fact is UNFORGIVABLE. for this i hold Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein solely responsible. they lied, destroyed evidence, and continue to lie about the permanent harm they caused and then chose to suppress. the cover up did have malicious intent, and shame on these three for all eternity. CAA never sent anyone to Mexico. i hope they look after other clients more respectfully if they in fact want to do the job for which they take money with any decency.

A post shared by Uma Thurman (@ithurman) on Feb 5, 2018 at 10:15am PSTTarantino said he knew the Times piece would be happening, and that he and Thurman had discussed for a long time what she would do with the video footage he got her. He said she’d wanted clarity on the car crash and asked Tarantino to find the footage for her.

“I had to find it, 15 years later,” Tarantino said. “We had to go through storage facilities, pulling out boxes. Shannon McIntosh found it. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think we were going to be able to find it. It was clear and it showed the crash and the aftermath. I was very happy to get it to Uma.”

Tarantino said that despite Thurman’s statement that he “was furious” when she told him she didn’t want to drive the car, he wasn’t angry and he didn’t even consider it a stunt.

“It was just driving,” Tarantino said. “None of us looked at it as a stunt. Maybe we should have, but we didn’t. I’m sure when it was brought up to me, that I rolled my eyes and was irritated. But I’m sure I wasn’t in a rage and I wasn’t livid. I didn’t go barging into Uma’s trailer, screaming at her to get into the car. I can imagine maybe rolling my eyes and thinking, we spent all this money taking this stick shift Karmann Ghia and changing the transmission, just for this shot.”

He said he drove down the road himself in the car. He found that it was okay, and he told Thurman so himself. Then, the question of whether Thurman could drive the car the opposite way came up, and Tarantino didn’t see an issue with it — but he didn’t test the road in the opposite direction himself. He realized it was a “horrendous mistake” and “one of the biggest regrets of my life.”

“We did the shot. And she crashed,” Tarantino said. “At first, no one really knew what happened. After the crash, when Uma went to the hospital, I was feeling in total anguish at what had happened. I walked the road, going the opposite direction. And in walking the road, going in the other direction … I don’t know how a straight road turns into an un-straight road, but it wasn’t as straight. It wasn’t the straight shot that it had been, going the other way. There is a little mini S-curve that almost seemed like it opened up to a mini fork in the road.”

After the crash, Thurman’s trust in Tarantino was broken. Even though the director helped her when she prepared to present her Weinstein story to the Times, Thurman had thought that the accident was covered up by the Kill Bill team. But Tarantino said that wasn’t the case, and he didn’t know Thurman thought he had wanted the entire event to be covered up.

“She feels it’s very possible the car was destroyed, at Harvey Weinstein’s insistence, and at Bennett Walsh and Lawrence Bender’s execution … frankly, I didn’t think about the car, after the crash, one iota,” Tarantino told Deadline. “Because to me, it was an insurance situation after that. Insurance would come in, do an investigation, and if there was something wrong with the car, they would find out and it would be handled. Writer/directors don’t deal with the insurance company; production managers do. Producers, business affairs people at Miramax deal with the insurance company.”

Tarantino said that Thurman’s accusations of him spitting on her and choking her were explicitly for movie scenes, and he was confused about her anger about the spitting incident.

He confirmed that he and Uma are on “okay” terms right now, and they spoke after the Times article was released.

“The whole weekend, we’ve been talking,” Tarantino said. “The uproar that happened against me, she was not prepared for. We have a long complicated history. We have been dealing with it for 22 years. We’re both one of the closest people in each other’s lives. So it was rather shocking to read this article, where the headline is about Uma’s anger, and lumping me into her anger about Harvey.”