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Almost nothing about Shia LaBeouf‘s involvement with Orphans went the right way. In 2013, the actor was slated to make his Broadway debut with a lead role in the play, but ultimately exited the project due to “creative differences.” It ultimately boiled down to an internal feud with Alec Baldwin, who entered the production as a replacement for Al Pacino. Part of their sparring was related to process, but the other part had to do with LaBeouf being in an unsettled headspace as someone who was living in Central Park.
“When he came in, I’m living in the park and I’m on steroids and I’m not in a good way,” LaBeouf told Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview. “I was sleeping in Central Park. They keep horses there at this little fire basin. And there’s a whole lot of room around there where you can just chill. You got to move every three or four hours, and the guy comes around, but you can spend most of your time there.”
LaBeouf would have played Treat, the older of two orphaned brothers living in a deteriorating row how in Philadelphia. At one point in the play, Treat kidnaps Harold, the role Baldwin took on, and finds that the rich businessman makes for an unexpected father figure. That dynamic bled into reality as rehearsals progressed, but not in a productive way.
“I had built the whole thing based on my relationship with Pacino. And that’s gone. So I was kind of heartbroken,” LaBeouf said. “By the time Baldwin got there, it was almost unfair. So he’s dealing with both my fractured little weak ego, right? All this hard prep that I’d done for two years, and my desperate need to show him all my prep, or that he would accept me somehow. I was so insecure. Well, that got contentious in the room. Then he got competitive. That’s just what our relationship turned into.”
LaBeouf attended Baldwin’s acting course at New York University while bitterly wondering how the more veteran actor was teaching the next generation when he wasn’t off book for their play yet. “It got insane,” he said, adding: “I’d be off book, he’d be on book, and he didn’t want me to look at him be off book. That makes it hard to play these scenes out or block this thing even.”
LaBeouf notes that he’s now on good terms with Baldwin. “He’s gone through a lot,” he said about the actor who found himself embroiled in lawsuits after he fired a prop gun on set that was loaded with live bullets, striking and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.
“I’ve gone through a lot,” LaBeouf added. In 2020, he was at the center of a lawsuit himself after the musician FKA Twigs sued him for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. She claimed the actor, whom she met on the set of his 2018 film Honey Boy, abused her both physically and emotionally, knowingly giving her an unidentified sexually transmitted infection, and battered her on numerous occasions. The trial is scheduled to begin on Sept. 29, 2025.
“We’ve both been able to send each other love and make it right before all the madness happened on both sides,” LaBeouf said of his parallel with Baldwin. “We made it right. He’s a good guy. He’s just like me. Fear will make you move different. I found it came from having absolutely no spiritual life.”
