Gene Hackman’s Friends Fire Back at Liza Minnelli Amid Recent Claims: ‘She Was a Nightmare on Set’

Liza Minnelli didn’t hold back when it came to her feelings on working with the late Gene Hackman, calling him “downright rude,” but now his friends are firing back at her.

“Gene can’t defend himself,” a longtime friend of the Hoosiers star told Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice Substack on Friday, March 13. “Going after someone who’s dead feels cowardly.”

Another source echoed a similar sentiment saying, “If Liza wants to talk about rude behavior, she should look in the mirror. She was a nightmare on set.”

Minnelli, 80, and Hackman, who died at the age of 95 last year, costarred in the 1975 film, Lucky Lady.

The insider added that the Cabaret star was “often late, sometimes sick and not always prepared.”

“Working with someone struggling with addiction isn’t easy,” the source continued. “She wanted to be treated like Hollywood royalty, and when she didn’t get that, things got difficult fast.”

This wasn’t the first time fellow actors had complaints about the Arthur actress. A source told Naughty But Nice that when Minnelli replaced Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria, “cast members would call in sick when they knew she was performing.”

“They joked they had ‘influenza with a Z,’” the insider explained.

As Closer previously reported, Minnelli’s new memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This, has seemingly opened up some old wounds. She wrote that she took aim at Hackman after director Stanley Donen allegedly told her that the Superman star wasn’t a fan of hers.

“I don’t like to whine, but Stanley later shared publicly that Gene was very dismissive of me during the film,” Minnelli wrote in the book, per Entertainment Weekly. “It’s hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent. I think it’s fair to say that Gene was downright rude.”