What do an errant trail of mustard, Richard Gere, Princess Diana, and a gerbil have in common? It sounds like the build-up to a bad joke, but depending on the veracity of the stories being told, the answer might well be Sylvester Stallone.
When you’ve been at the top of the Hollywood tree for as long as the Rocky and Rambo star has, enemies are bound to be made along the way. Arnold Schwarzenegger is arguably the most notable of Stallone’s foes, but they’ve long since resolved their differences after engaging in posturing that was only ever figurative. On the other hand, his feud with Gere – which came to blows – was never truly settled.
It all dates back to one of Stallone’s earliest roles in the 1974 drama The Lords of Flatbush, with Gere initially cast in the part of Chico that Perry King ultimately played. During rehearsals, the two future A-listers found themselves at loggerheads over a condiment spillage, which ended up costing the Pretty Woman star his job altogether.
Reflecting on their first incident to Ain’t It Cool News, Stallone explained how mustard almost caused all-out conflict: “He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh,” he said. “I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car. The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay.”
Of course, it was Stallone who was kept aboard, and he admitted that decades after the fact, his would-be co-star still harboured an “intense dislike” for him after being given his “walking papers”. In an even more incredible twist, though, he was convinced Gere holds him responsible for a notorious urban legend: “He even thinks I’m the individual responsible for the gerbil rumour. Not true, but that’s the rumour.”
More than a decade after getting into a shoving match, throwing fists, and launching elbows at each other, Elton John claimed that Stallone and Gere would renew their hostilities over the affection of Princess Diana. As the legendary musician put it, the reignited nemeses were “apparently about to settle their differences over Diana by having a fistfight.”
Stallone’s initial impression of Gere was to dismiss him as someone who thought they were “the baddest night at the round table,” with his preference for going method and remaining in character making him “impossible to deal with” as a result. Tempers flared, the latter was fired, and somehow – allegedly, of course – got it into his head years later that Stallone may have been the one responsible for starting the rumour that he’d placed an innocent household pet in a position it should never have to find itself in.