Sylvester Stallone is Catching Hell for Demanding 'Fucking Ugly' and 'Tub of Lard' Extras in 'Tulsa King' Be Replaced with 'Pretty Young Girls'

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It's been a tough half a year or so for fans of Rocky, the greatest sports movie franchise of all time. (Last week I heaped similar praise on Friday Night Lights, but that was for being a book, film and TV series. So I can be right on both counts.) First we lost Burt "Paulie" Young. Then it was the great Carl "Apollo" Weathers, gone all too soon. 

And now, the entertainment industry is coming hard after the Heavyweight Champion of Hollywood himself, Sylvester Stallone. He's being accused in the court of public on felony counts of being "disrespectful" to extras on the set of his series Tulsa King:

Source - An Atlanta-based casting agency has quit the Paramount+ dramedy amid claims posted online that background actors were verbally abused on the set by star Sylvester Stallone. …

The move came amid screenshots circulating online taken from public and private Facebook casting groups about background actor experiences on the Tulsa King set. In two that were posted on X by TV writer Julie Benson (Star Trek: Prodigy) — who is not affiliated with Tulsa King …

“I have been informed of certain things that happened on Thursday … I came the 2nd day (Friday) to see what was happening,” [casting agency director] Rose Locke allegedly wrote in a post that was shared via screenshot. “At the end of the day I resigned because it was a clear toxic environment that I was not comfortable putting myself or background artists in.” …

The author of a second attached screenshot from another FB group moderator said this: “While working on TK this week Sylvester Stallone was observed calling the director over and saying ‘what the F* is up with these F**** ugly background [actors].’ He and the director proceeded to call certain people terrible names and laughed at them. ‘Tub of lard,’ ‘fat guy with cane’ and was making fun of their weight and handicaps. Sly said, ‘Bring in pretty young girls to be around me.’ …

Another background actor echoed on that claim on the CL Casting Facebook page: “I was there, right behind Mr. Stallone. He shouted to the director to come over here. Lot’s of F bombs dropped. Stallone was very upset with the look of the background actors. Said they were hideous and old and fat. Next thing, people are being told to go back to holding and younger people were brought in.” … 

[Craig] Zisk, the episode’s director and executive producer, denied the reports to TMZ, saying the extras were improperly cast. Zisk claims he told Locke the extras were supposed to be “young and hip,” but the background actors who showed up were older. Zisk … told Locke she’d need to submit photos of actors moving forward, leading to a dispute.

There are two important points that need to be made here. First, Sylvester Stallone is a certified creative genius. A man who brought the world some of the most enduring and iconic fictional characters of modern times. Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, of course. But also Tango. Lincoln Hawk. Cobra. Gabe Walker. Det. John Spartan. Poor, disrespected Freddy Heflin from Cop Land. Whatever his name was in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. He is straight up one of America's all time greatest character actors. And as such, he's allowed the same latitude afforded to other great artists. Mozart ran around the royal palaces of Austria making fart jokes. Gaugin went to Tahiti and started giving all the women syphilis. Picasso was such a tyrant his own granddaughter famously said "He needed the blood of those who loved him." You don't have to approve of their behavior to accept that sometimes it takes high maintenance personalities to create works of true brilliance that benefit the whole world. 

Next, and this can't be said enough, these complaints are coming from third parties and the man in charge denies them. 

But more importantly, where is the wrong here? Sure, people don't like to be told they're "hideous, old and fat." But you know who really gets offended by hearing it? People who are hideous, old and fat. If Sly said it on the set of Barbie, do we really think Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Dua Lipa are running off the set crying and complaints will get filed? I know this is easy for me to say, since I'm a handsome silver fox and the envy of men everywhere. But while it's true that the truth hurts, it's also a defense against libel. 

Most important of all though, if Stallone ragged on people's physical appearance in a lot of settings, the ones who are so upset would have a point. Maybe. But he wasn't demeaning the staff at a children's cancer ward or the people at SpaceX launching rockets here. This was a film set. This was meant to go out on television. Which, as the term implies, is a visual medium. It's right there in the root form of the word. Of course the background actors' appearance is important. If he was going a scene on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, maybe you'd want a bunch of chunks and uggos and old fat guys with canes, just for the realism. Even though no one watching TV really wants to be reminded of how ugly the general public actually is, you might make that creative choice. But you wouldn't want the same crew in an orgy scene in Euphoria or whatever. 

Stallone and Zisk were trying to do a scene with a "young and hip" crowd in the background, and they got the cast of Coccoon. And rather than just sit there and say nothing because he's worried about sparing the feelings of a bunch of nobodies getting paid nothing just to show up in the background of his show, Stallone spoke up. Like a professional. He demanded better. Because he has artistic integrity and gives a shit about his audience.

The bottom line is that if anyone has a legitimate gripe in this situation, it's Oscar winner and pioneering filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, not the gross "tub of lard" who dared showed up on his film set.