James Hunter, a background actor suing actress Mia Goth for allegedly kicking him in the head while filming a scene in the horror film MaXXXine, tells The Daily Beast he’s now in a battle with A24, the film’s production company and distributor, over raw footage of the film he says may confirm the incident.
Hunter, whose lawsuit claims the alleged kick caused him “disorientation, vertigo, migraines, nightmares, and severe emotional distress,” tells The Daily Beast that he believes A24 is effectively “suppressing evidence.”
“They’re refusing to release the unedited footage to us so that we can look at it and see which tape [shows when] this actually happened,” the actor says in an exclusive interview. Hunter’s suit also names A24 and director Ti West and was filed in January of this year ahead of the film’s release earlier this month.
A24 tells The Daily Beast, “The claims made in the complaint are simply not true. As this is in active litigation, we cannot say more at this time but continue to vigorously defend Mia and the entire filmmaking team against these extremely baseless allegations.”
Mia Goth, the star of MaXXXine and the previous two films in the X franchise, X and Pearl, is a British actress who’s also starred in a string of other major independent films in recent years, including Infinity Pool alongside Alexander Skarsgård, the Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson starrer Suspiria, and Nymphomaniac alongside Shia LaBeouf. Goth has been romantically linked to LaBeouf, with whom she shares a daughter, since 2012. In a recent New York Times profile, she declined to address Hunter’s lawsuit but said she was “very grateful for A24’s support.”
In his complaint for battery and wrongful termination, Hunter says that while filming a scene for MaXXXine in which he had “to lay down in the dirt and play dead,” with his head next to star Mia Goth’s mark, she’d “nearly stepped on him” while doing the scene. He then claims that after he told a crew member about the accident, Goth returned to do the scene again, this time “intentionally kicking him in his head with her boot.” The suit also says he “immediately experienced headache and stiffness in his neck” after the kick.
Goth apologized afterward, Hunter says, (though “It seemed to me [she was] forced,” he recalls), but things would get worse later, he claims. After the incident, Goth “invaded [Hunter’s] privacy in a bathroom; laughed at, taunted, mocked, and belittled” him, according to the lawsuit.
In an interview with the horror news website Dread Central earlier this month, Hunter alleged that when Goth entered a porta potty he was using near set following the alleged kick, she told him, “Nobody will believe you because you’re nothing. Get the fuck off my set, you big baby.” He told the site he’d written down the words on a call sheet that day so that he wouldn’t forget.
In his conversation with The Daily Beast, Hunter named a set PA he says may have overheard the porta potty incident, but the crew member did not return requests for comment. Hunter also named a SAG representative he says he reported the incident to, but that individual also did not return requests for comment. SAG declined to comment for this story. Sources familiar with the situation tell The Daily Beast that A24 conducted its own investigation following the allegations in the lawsuit, but found no proof of Hunter’s claims.
“This was so strange and bizarre,” Hunter continues, telling The Daily Beast that Goth ignored him for the rest of his time on set. He claims he was later asked not to return, even though, as stated in the suit, he “maintained a calm and composed demeanor, even when physically assaulted and taunted by Defendant Goth, a major Hollywood actress.”
“I said nothing to anybody. I was starting to feel unwell from the kick, and I was more just eager to get off the set than anything,” he adds. Hunter says he “didn’t realize how severe [his injury] was at the time,” and once diagnosed with the syndrome, he decided to sue.
The Daily Beast has learned that since filing, however, Hunter has not appeared at either of his two scheduled depositions so far. Hunter says he’s had to reschedule due to health events caused by the alleged kick. According to his attorney, for one scheduled deposition, Hunter had to be hospitalized for a migraine. He has another deposition scheduled for August.
The primary roadblock in his case now, according to Hunter, is not being able to review the “unedited” footage from the film, which he believes will validate his account. However, sources tell The Daily Beast that the footage has been offered to Hunter’s attorney, Freddie Fletcher, if he would agree to a protective order, as is common when parties request proprietary information in a case. But Fletcher says it wasn’t quite that simple.
“They wanted a protective order that would allow them to designate any document or any other matter in the case for attorney eyes only,” Fletcher tells The Daily Beast, “which means that the client could not see it or be told about it. How can you represent your client without discussing the case with him?”
Fletcher says he agreed to “a protective order to keep any footage confidential,” but claims A24 didn’t go for it. He says he’s now filing a motion to “compel further responses to our discovery”—in other words, he and Hunter hope to get a judge to force A24 to turn over the footage. If there is a public trial, the footage would be exposed anyway, if the judge considers it relevant evidence.
“If there’s nothing on it, then they should just give it to us,” Fletcher says.
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