Last year, Christopher Nolan made headlines for allegedly not allowing chairs on the sets of his movies. Anne Hathaway—who worked with Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar—mentioned it during a conversation with Hugh Jackman for Variety’s “Actors On Actors” series, and it inadvertently sparked a debate about whether it’s fair for a director to do so. But the filmmaker’s representative quickly shut down the rumors, claiming the only things he banned were cell phones and smoking. But while Nolan doesn’t want people to think he’s a dick for not allowing his cast to relax between sets, Zack Snyder takes pride in being a “no chairs” guy.
“There’s no sitting down, like, I banned chairs from the set,” the Army Of The Dead director says during an appearance on The Playlist’s Fourth Wall podcast. “But the nice thing is, it’s really intimate. I can just talk to the actors right there, I’m not back in a monitor across the room. It was definitely the most purely engaged I’ve been making a movie.”
Wanting to have more engagement with actors is great, perhaps it even helped make Army Of The Dead so much better than Justice League. But banning chairs seems a bit drastic, considering the cast is working long hours and could likely use a break between scenes. So, while Nolan turned out to not be a chair tyrant, now we can rehash the chair debacle with Snyder—for better or for worse.