Sylvester Stallone Reveals What Really Started His Decades-Long Feud With Richard Gere

A spilled lunch, a heated confrontation, and a Hollywood feud that lasted for decades. Sylvester Stallone is finally revealing what really happened between him and Richard Gere on the set of The Lords of Flatbush.

In this memoir, The Steps, published Sept. 29 by William Morrow, Stallone has detailed his confrontation with Gere that took place decades ago during the filming of The Lords of Flatbush, the 1974 drama.

The trouble between the actors started while the two were still looking to establish their careers. According to Stallone, the feud started even before the filming, mainly during the audition process. He noted that while he got along pretty well with Robert De Niro, his rapport with Gere was far from comfortable.

“I remember everything went pretty well initially with me and De Niro,” Stallone wrote in his memoir. “We were trying to outtalk each other. I enjoyed improvisation and the process of ad-libbing. Then the improvs with Richard Gere went bad, when Gere grabbed my T-shirt and his fingernails dug into my 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.”

Stallone said he asked director Stephen Verona if he could respond the same way he would have responded in real life. “I turned to Stephen Verona and asked him, ‘Is it okay if I ad-lib here and react the way I would actually react if someone did that to me in real life?’” “‘What would you do?’ ‘Do? I’d knock his teeth out.’ ‘Please don’t.’”

The tension between Stallone and Gere eventually boiled over during a lunch break on the set, when the two were sitting inside a car and, according to Stallone, Gere spilled chicken grease onto his leg despite being warned not to make a mess.

Stallone said director Stephen Verona ultimately chose to keep him and remove Gere from the production, leading to Gere’s role being recast, while Robert De Niro also left the project separately to pursue another film.

Perry King and Henry Winkler went on to join Stallone in the principal cast of The Lords of Flatbush. At the time, none of the actors had yet reached the level of fame they would later achieve, with Stallone still several years away from the breakthrough success of Rocky and Winkler on the verge of becoming a household name as Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on Happy Days.