Quentin Tarantino nearly made one of the biggest casting changes in Inglourious Basterds before filming had even begun. Mélanie Laurent, whose performance as Shosanna Dreyfus became central to the 2009 film, was fired after a disastrous cast reading — and only won her role back after personally persuading the director to reconsider.

The revelation comes from The Making of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, a new behind-the-scenes book by Jay Glennie, published in the UK on November 10, 2026. Featuring contributions from Tarantino and a foreword by Brad Pitt, the book revisits the production decisions that shaped the filmmaker's alternative-history Second World War thriller.

But Laurent's dismissal was only one part of a more complicated casting story. Another celebrated French actress, Isabelle Huppert, also lost her place in the production — although the circumstances, and the role involved, were entirely different.

Why Quentin Tarantino fired Mélanie Laurent

According to excerpts from Glennie's book published by People, Tarantino was deeply disappointed by Laurent's performance during the cast's table read, an occasion he regards as one of the most important moments of preproduction.

"Mélanie Laurent's table read was terrible," the director recalled.

For Tarantino, bringing the entire cast together to read the screenplay provides an early opportunity to hear the film taking shape beyond his own imagination. Laurent's performance convinced him that he had made the wrong casting decision, and he dismissed her.

Laurent, however, refused to accept that her opportunity was over.

She contacted Tarantino a few days later, explaining that she had been feeling unwell during the reading. Rather than simply requesting another audition, she offered to travel to Germany at her own expense, pay for her accommodation and make herself available whenever the director could see her.

Her determination earned her another chance, although there was no guarantee she would regain the role. Tarantino agreed to reconsider his decision on the condition that Laurent complete three days of rehearsals before he made a final judgment.

The rehearsals changed his mind. Laurent returned as Shosanna, the Jewish cinema owner whose plan to kill Nazi leaders becomes one of the film's central storylines.

Looking back, Tarantino emphasised that the difficult reading no longer defined his opinion of the actress. He praised her finished performance and said that, outside a detailed discussion of the film's production, he would have little reason to revisit the incident.

Isabelle Huppert was fired too — but not as Laurent's replacement

The other casting decision revealed in Glennie's book concerns Isabelle Huppert, who was originally attached to play Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who helps Shosanna in Paris.

Huppert was not brought in to replace Laurent as Shosanna. She had a separate role in a storyline that would eventually disappear from the completed film.

According to Tarantino's account, contractual negotiations involving Huppert had already become prolonged when she failed to attend the cast's table read. The director subsequently removed her from the production and selected Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung for the part.

Cheung filmed her scenes, but audiences never saw them in the theatrical version of Inglourious Basterds.

The character's storyline explained how Shosanna came to live in Paris and acquire the cinema that would later become crucial to her revenge. During editing, Tarantino decided that the additional backstory was unnecessary.

Unlike the firing of Laurent, Cheung's disappearance from the film was not a previously undisclosed development.

In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes around the film's original 2009 release, Tarantino had already explained that Cheung had performed well but that her scenes were removed because they supplied information viewers did not need.

He preferred allowing audiences to imagine what happened to Shosanna during the years separating her escape from the Nazis and her later life in Paris. The film could establish that passage of time without showing every step of her journey.

The newly published account therefore fills in an earlier part of that casting history: Huppert had held the role before Cheung, and her departure had resulted from a separate disagreement during preproduction.

Laurent's experience had a very different outcome. Her return preserved the performance audiences ultimately saw at the centre of the film's Paris cinema storyline, while Huppert's intended character was removed altogether. Two actresses were dismissed, but only one of those casting decisions was reversed — and the other concerned scenes that never reached the screen.