Richard Dreyfuss Criticizes Jaws Broadway Show for Making Him Out to Be a ‘Big Jerk’: ‘That Hurt’

Richard Dreyfuss doesn’t agree with the way he’s portrayed in the new Broadway play about creation Jaws.

Earlier this month, the actor, 75, attended the show The shark is brokena fictionalized account of how Dreyfuss and his costars Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw spent time on the set of the 1975 film. The drama is co-written by and stars Ian Shaw, son of the late actor Robert.

Dreyfuss posed for photos with the show’s crew when he visited the set. He said vanity fair in a later interview that he found the experience “pretty awful”.

“Ian – who has more than anyone’s right to write whatever he wants – never called me and said, ‘Give me some background,'” he said. “Or, ‘Give me your opinion on this and this.’ And they just decided to make my character a big jerk.”

Ian previously told PEOPLE in a Sept. 14 interview about it The shark is broken that his play is “certainly a spiritually correct picture of the three” Jaws actors.

“Robert was very open and extroverted and his traumas are somewhat portrayed in the play,” he said of the portrayals of his father and Dreyfuss. “So his response to that was to kind of take over the world and be this kind of warrior. Then you have Richard, who’s more introspective and internal and anxious.”

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Colin Donnell, Alex Brightman, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Dreyfuss and Ian Shaw October 18, 2023

Bruce Glikas/WireImage

The play premiered in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019. Ian, 53, brought the play to Broadway with co-stars Alex Brightman, who plays Dreyfuss, and Colin Donnell, who plays the late Roy Scheider, in July for a run at New York’s John Golden Theater which closes on November 19.

While The shark is broken depicts the fractured, antagonistic relationship between Dreyfuss and Robert on the famous ship from The Orca, Dreyfuss said vanity fair his relationship with Robert is not accurately portrayed.

“When we were surrounded by a lot of other people, Robert would turn on me and I would turn on him,” he said. “But that was only to make the hours pass better, faster. We didn’t take any of it seriously.” Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Alex Brightman and Richard Dreyfuss October 18, 2023

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Dreyfuss said that one day he threw a glass of Robert’s bourbon into the sea, to which he says Robert responded by drenching it with a hose.

“That was the only day I lost my sense of humor,” he said. “It wasn’t a fight. The fight went on forever. There was never any bad feelings between us.”

Dreyfuss added that his problem with the series was “that they made a fool of my character”. “They didn’t do it to Roy, and they didn’t do it to Robert,” he said. “And that hurt because it wasn’t true.”

He also claimed that he had just started hearing stories about the alleged feud between him and Robert Jaws‘ set in recent years. He attributed some of those stories to director Steven Spielberg and one of the film’s screenwriters, Carl Gottlieb, who Dreyfuss said “knew better, knew there was no argument.”

Alex Brightman and Richard Drefyuss October 18, 2023

Bruce Glikas/WireImage

“There was a constant kind of humor between us,” he told the newspaper. “If you’d only seen us on set, then you might think there was something – a fight going on – but it was never real. Never. And I hold Carl and Steven for that.”

“I have tremendous respect for Steven’s talent as a director,” Dreyfuss added. “I guess I don’t have his talent as much as his friend.”

Spielberg’s rep did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Dreyfuss said vanity fair he decided to speak publicly about it The shark is broken because he is the only surviving actor from jaws three waters. Robert died in 1978 at the age of 51, and Scheider in 2008 at the age of 75.

“It was a great experience not only during the filming, but 30 years after. It didn’t go sour at all until this bull fight — started to be talked about,” Dreyfuss said. “It makes a perfect thing a little broken.”

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Source: HIS Education