Sylvester Stallone Reveals What Led to His and Richard Gere’s On-Set Physical Altercation

More than 50 years after he and Richard Gere fought on the set of The Lords of Flatbush, Sylvester Stallone reveals what led to the physical altercation.

In his newly released memoir, The Steps, the Rocky icon detailed the situation, noting there was tension between him and Gere leading up to the fight.

“I remember everything went pretty well initially with me and [Robert] De Niro,” he wrote. “We were trying to outtalk each other. I enjoyed improvisation and the process of ad-libbing.”

However, his improvisations with Gere didn’t go as well: “When Gere grabbed my T-shirt and his fingernails dug into my skin. I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take. He couldn’t have known, but Gere had begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside me.”

Stallone said he tried to fix the situation by asking the film’s director, Stephen Verona, if it was OK for him to ad-lib and react the way he would in real life if someone did that to him.

“[He asked] ‘What would you do?’” the actor wrote. “[I said] ‘Do? I’d knock his teeth out.’ [Verona replied], ‘Please don’t.’”

Following the tense situation, Stallone recalled that things quickly took a turn for the worse. During their shared lunch break, Stallone told Gere not to make a mess.

Gere responded by spilling chicken grease on Stallone. That was the last straw for the actor.

“A stream of chicken grease spilled off the foil paper onto my leg,” Stallone wrote. “I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat. ‘Hey, man, I don’t want to get physical,’ Gere said in a thin voice. ‘Too late …’”

Stallone then wrote that Verona stepped in front of Gere in order to stop the fight. “It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working,” Stallone wrote. “One of us had to go.”

Gere, along with De Niro, ended up dropping out of the film. Perry King and Henry Winkler replaced them.

Despite the circumstances, Stallone said the on-set change-up led to his longtime friendship with Winkler.