Josh O’Connor has exited Separate Rooms. The Challengers star was widely reported to be leading the upcoming Luca Guadagnino film, but O’Connor revealed in a new interview that he has dropped out of the project for good.
Last March, Variety reported that O’Connor was in talks to star in Guadagnino’s Separate Rooms. The film is an adaptation of the 1989 Italian novel of same name by author Pier Vittorio Tondelli, and it follows a gay man’s travels through Europe as he processes his grief over losing his partner.
Although the casting was never officially confirmed, there was good reason to believe that O’Connor was a shoo-in for the lead. At the time, he seemed eager for the role, reportedly going so far as taking Italian lessons.
But, after over a year of silence, those plans have now definitively fallen through. The culprit is the oldest reason in the business: scheduling conflicts.
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In a new interview with Deadline, O’Connor was asked whether he was still involved with the film. “Unfortunately not,” he said. “Luca’s working all the time. He’s such a busy bee and rightly so. We’re constantly talking. He may well do it, but unfortunately it won’t be with me.”
Fans of both O’Connor and Guadagnino are disappointed by the news, to say the least.
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Guadagnino is just about the busiest man in Hollywood, and this is not the first indication that he might be a little too busy. This news comes soon after Guadagnino’s reunion with another Challengers star, Mike Faist, likewise fell through. Faist would have starred in Sgt. Rock, a DC Studios film and Guadagnino’s first comic book adaptation, until it was put on an indefinite pause. Again, according to The Wrap, scheduling was the issue.
In addition to Separate Rooms, Guadagnino is also directing the upcoming remake of American Psycho. O’Connor’s latest film, The History of Sound, a gay WWI love story co-starring Paul Mescal, just had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. But unlike Guadagnino, it sounds like the star is looking forward to slowing down.
“I’m shooting this summer in Europe with an American director, more of which I can’t say,” O’Connor told Deadline. “But then I am going to go and do some other stuff for a little bit. I love my ceramics, I love gardening. My poor garden is suffering when I go away.”
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