Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere nearly settled a dinner-party dispute over Princess Diana with their fists in the 1990s, years after Gere was pushed off their shared film set.
Page Six reports that Elton John’s 2019 memoir “Me” describes a star-studded dinner he hosted in the ’90s, around the time he was writing songs for the 1994 film “The Lion King.” Guests included Stallone, Gere, and Princess Diana.
Diana, by then separated from Charles, “straight away” seemed “taken with” Gere, John wrote. The pair ended up “sitting in front of the fireplace together, locked in rapt conversation.”
Stallone did not take it well.
John’s husband, David Furnish, stumbled on Stallone and Gere in a hallway, “apparently about to settle their differences over Diana by having a fistfight.” When Gere kept up the attention, Stallone stormed out.
John recorded Stallone’s exit line:
"I never would have come if I'd known Prince f***** Charming was gonna be here. If I'd wanted her, I would've taken her!"
Diana was “completely unruffled,” John wrote. “Maybe she hadn’t realized what was happening. Or maybe stuff like that happened all the time.”
John, now 79, clarified that Gere had already split from Cindy Crawford by then. Stallone is 80. Gere is 77. Representatives for Stallone, Gere, and John did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The dinner flare-up was not their first run-in. Stallone’s memoir “The Steps,” published Sept. 29, revisits trouble on the “Lords of Flatbush” set roughly two decades before “The Lion King.”
Stallone wrote that “one of [them] had to go.” “It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working.”
During an audition, Stallone said Gere’s nails dug “into [Stallone’s] skin.”
"I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take. He couldn’t have known, but Gere had begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside me."
Asked to react the way he would in real life, Stallone told director Stephen F. Verona he would “knock [Gere’s] teeth out.” Verona answered, “Please don’t.” Gere, Stallone wrote, did not “want to get physical.” A chicken-grease spill added to the friction. Gere was replaced by Perry King.
Old grudges, big egos, and a princess by the fireplace, Hollywood’s version of manners has never required much more than that.
