During a 2023 interview with Toni Collette, John Leguizamo revealed that he based his washed-up action star character in the previous year’s The Menu on Steven Seagal. “What am I going to spoof myself like I’m a failed actor? Hell no. I wouldn’t have done that. I used Steven Seagal because I hate him,” Leguizamo told ComicBook.com. Collette, who co-starred with Leguizamo in the Prime Video series The Power, was reportedly shocked by Leguizamo’s bluntness. However, this was far from the first time Leguizamo made his feelings clear about Seagal.
The issue between Leguizamo and Seagal began when the two were working on the 1995 movie Executive Decision. As Leguizamo explained to The A.V. Club in 2012, Seagal showed up to rehearsals one day and declared, “I’m in command. What I say is law.”
Leguizamo found the statement so ridiculous that his natural reaction was to laugh at its absurdity. Seagal, who was apparently dead serious, didn’t understand what Leguizamo thought was so funny.
John Leguizamo Said He Based His Washed-Up Actor in ‘The Menu’ on Steven Seagal Because He Hates Him
“And then he came up and he taekwondoed my a** against a brick wall,” Leguizamo said while recounting the incident on Q TV years later, adding that Seagal also hit him with his elbow in the process. “He’s six-foot-five and caught me off guard, knocked all the air out of me, and I was like, ‘Why? Why?’ What I really wanted to say is how big and fat he is, and how he runs like a girl, but I didn’t because all I could say was ‘Why?’”
Seagal doesn’t seem to have ever responded publicly to Leguizamo’s comments, but he evidently managed to get a threat through to Leguizamo when the story first started making the rounds. According to Leguizamo, Seagal’s publicist reached out to his publicist at one point to let him know that if Seagal ever saw him on a red carpet, he was gonna knock him out. Leguizamo replied by saying that he wasn’t afraid because he hadn’t seen Seagal in a movie for years. The only downside to the remark, Leguizamo pointed out, was that Seagal could legitimately knock him out: “He runs like a girl, but he hits like a six-foot-five dude who has trained his whole life,” the actor joked.
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