Sigourney Weaver steered clear of Harry Connick Jr. on the set of their 1995 crime thriller Copycat.
In the film, Connick played a repulsive serial killer named Daryll Lee Cullum, who was obsessed with Weaver's psychologist character Dr. Helen Hudson.
While promoting his latest romance movie Find Me Falling on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show with Julia Cunningham, Connick, 56, recalled how costar Weaver, 74, avoided him during filming.
"Sigourney Weaver, she's so unbelievable. She wouldn't talk to me," he recalled. "I didn't meet her till the premiere. She would not— every time I came around, she went the other way. She was like, 'I don't want to be around that guy!' "
The singer joked, "I remembered what it was like to be in high school."
Copycat, directed by Jon Amiel, also starred Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney as detectives trying to track down a serial killer who is recreating infamous murders from history.
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Weaver's accomplished Dr. Helen Hudson becomes agoraphobic after surviving an assault by Connick's killer at the start of the film. During an interview back in 1995, Weaver explained how she coped with filming such a dark role.
"I was often a basket case," she said at the time. "It took a lot out of me, I think. A great thing happened, which was I met a wonderful karate teacher in San Francisco. Every night, even if we ended at like 9:30, I would meet with him for an hour and I'd practice kicks and everything. I don't think I could've gotten through without it because it was very centering, and I think it also took me out of that victim frame of mind."
Connick — who went on to make movies like Hope Floats, Bug and The Iron Giant — also recalled on -
The Jess Cagle Show that landing his violent Copycat role came after a string of failed auditions.
"Can I give you some inside dirt? I wanna give you some inside dirt," he said. "So, I was a kid when I did that. I was like 23 years old, and I'd been going on a bunch of auditions and I wasn't getting anything and I was like, 'Actually, I think I'm done for a while.' "
However, "My manager said, there's a guy named Jon Amiel, he's a British director. He's doing a film called Copycat. I didn't know anything about it. She goes, 'Why don't you just go meet him?' I said okay."
"So I'm sitting in the room with him and we're talking, and he goes, you know, he's from England, he said, 'Well, what do you know about serial killers?' I said, 'You know, what I see on the news. I don't know much.' "
Connick continued, "And he starts saying like, 'You're from the south, right?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm from New Orleans.' He said, 'What would you say in this situation, and what would you say in that situation?' He said, 'Is that a really strong accent?' I said, 'Well, some people think I have a strong accent, but I can, you know, I can make it stronger. I can kind of like, you know, make that kind of thing...' and I started, like, giving him some southern expressions and he said, 'Okay, thank you,' and I'm like, 'Oh, well there's another one!' "
"Then my manager calls me like an hour later and says, 'He wants you for the role,' and I'm thinking, like, what did I possibly do to convince this guy that I could play that guy?" said the star.
Copycat is currently available to stream on Paramount+. Find Me Falling is now on Netflix.
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