Credit: YouTube
Sat 1 August 2026 17:45, UK
Adam Driver might have done a stint in three Star Wars movies, beginning over a decade ago now, but as a new Spider-Man film hits cinemas with Avengers: Doomsday still to come, you’re not going to see him in a Marvel film any time soon, although the reasons for that are possibly up for debate.
Officially, according to Marvel Studios supremo Kevin Feige, they would love him to be involved in an MCU movie, but Driver keeps turning them down, although he would be open to doing more Star Wars. In fact, Driver was going to reprise his character of Ben Solo, who becomes Kylo Ren, in a spin-off movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, but that was cancelled by Disney.
And at some point, perhaps you have to wonder whether some allegations about Driver’s behaviour that have cropped up over the last few years might be affecting his casting in a major family-friendly franchise.
Earlier this year, Girls director Lena Dunham referenced her former co-star in her autobiography Fame, and specifically noted his aggressive demeanour in some scenes she filmed with him. Dunham accused Driver of screaming at her and throwing a chair against a wall during rehearsals, in addition to some questionable actions while filming a sex scene.
She said that Driver, who she acted with on the show for five years until 2017, ignored her careful blocking of the early scene and ‘hurled me this way and that’. Despite describing him as short-tempered and physically imposing however, it seems the two had a complex and emotionally fraught relationship, with Driver supporting Dunham through periods of extreme anxiety.
And back in 2021, there were other reports from a former co-star of Driver’s that painted him in a particularly poor light. Portuguese actor Lidia Franco appeared alongside Driver in Terry Gilliam’s 2018 adventure film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and later went on a podcast to complain about her experience on set, saying: “I keep from this movie a very bad experience because of Adam Driver. He is a very bad person. He behaved very badly with me, physically. He attacked me.”
For some reason, it appears that once again a chair was involved in Driver’s misdemeanours, with Franco adding that the attack “had nothing to do with the scene, it was a camouflaged assault, with a chair.”
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Franco, who was 76 at the time, said that although she raised her concerns with production staff, who allowed her to leave the set, there was nothing else they could legally do about the accusations. Franco also went on to say that Driver didn’t want anyone looking at him while filming, and any extras who did would be fired.
Sometime later, however, Franco walked the comments back, blaming the furore on them being translated from her native Portuguese and saying that she was not in fact assaulted and that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
She did, however, say that she felt Driver hadn’t taken enough care during the scene in which they were in close physical proximity, adding that every time Driver stood up in character, a chair would bump into her, causing her discomfort on multiple occasions. She admitted she had been venting in the original interview, but didn’t intend to bring any harm to Driver.
As for Driver, he had no comment to make about Franco’s initial complaints, nor her follow-up. The movie itself, based on a novel from the early 1600s, was a huge flop on release, costing the studio more than $10m in losses.
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