The Other Boleyn Girl

**BLOOD, SEX & RESHOOTS: The Messy Off‑Screen Reign of The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)**

Scandalous sisters, a moody king, and a whole lot of beheading? That’s just the plot. Behind the scenes, this glossy Tudor soap came with feud rumors, reshoots, costume pain, and a baby Benedict Cumberbatch getting edited into oblivion. Grab your French hood — we’re going in.

Cast Feuds & Set Frenzy

• Rumor has it there was frost on the silk between Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. Gossip Girl’s own Leighton Meester casually mentioned she’d “just been reading something” about Portman and Johansson “didn’t get along” on set, using it as an example of the press loving catfight narratives between actresses . No details, no receipts — just enough to light the fandom on fire.

• Eric Bana, meanwhile, went full damage-control dad. In an interview he flat-out denied any diva warfare, insisting there was no ego clash and saying the women “got on famously” and that actors “really do love each other,” describing their dynamic as a kind of friendly competition that raised everyone’s game . Translation: “Please stop asking me if the queens were clawing each other’s eyes out.”

Sisterhood in Corsets: Scarlett the Bodyguard

• Far from feuding, Scarlett was apparently Natalie’s on-set big sister. Johansson later talked about how Portman struggled to confront directors and senior crew when something was wrong. If Natalie whispered “My rib is killing me” in a too-tight bodice, Scarlett would literally call out, “Hello, someone, Natalie’s rib is hurting! Can you fix her zipper?” across the set .

• Portman reportedly found Johansson’s direct, outspoken style “a real learning experience,” helping her feel braver about speaking up to powerful people on a very hierarchical, costume-heavy set ^[3]. So while the movie sells sisterly betrayal, the real-life story was more girl solidarity than Tudor backstabbing.

Press Tour Chaos: The Boob Quote Heard ’Round the World

• While promoting the film, Portman made headlines with one extremely quotable comment about Johansson’s chest. Referring to designer Isaac Mizrahi’s infamous Golden Globes grope of Scarlett a couple of years earlier, Natalie joked that Scarlett has such “beautiful” breasts she’d “want to grab them” herself — then immediately acknowledged it was “not so appropriate” .

• The remark, reported via The Times and picked up by HuffPost, was instantly spun into flirty-girl gossip: was Nat low‑key crushing on her co-star or just really committed to body-positive chaos on the press circuit? Either way, it added a very modern flash of scandal to a press tour about Tudor chastity belts.

Scandals & Controversies: History Nerds Declare WAR

• Tudor historians and history bloggers have never forgiven this film. Multiple longform takedowns describe it as “a fictional take on fiction” that turns Philippa Gregory’s already loose novel into an even more chaotic stew of made‑up events and scrambled timelines .

• Particular fury is reserved for the rape scene: the film depicts Henry VIII violently forcing himself on Anne Boleyn. Critics note this assault is not in Gregory’s book and has no solid historical basis; one essay on Anne’s portrayals in media flags The Other Boleyn Girl as part of a trend of gratuitous “rape of Anne Boleyn” depictions that say more about modern shock value than Tudor reality . Even sympathetic Anne Boleyn fan sites call that scene “too far” and deeply misleading ^[7].

• Online Tudor communities and bloggers also slam the movie for:
• Rewriting the sisters’ ages and roles.
• Turning Anne into a one-note scheming villain.
• Mangling the political and religious stakes into soapy bedroom drama ^[6][8].

This isn’t just “some inaccuracies” — for history fans, it’s a full-blown reputational crime scene.

Production Drama: Delays, Reshoots & Lost Oscar Dreams

• Behind the velvet curtains, the production was not the smooth royal pageant the studio hoped for. Natalie Portman’s own fan-site biography notes that she “returned to England in August” with the cast for reshoots on The Other Boleyn Girl . The film had already been listed as completed months earlier, and industry chatter pointed to delays from a prime awards-season berth while the studio tried to fix the cut.

• Awards bloggers later lumped the movie into the “almost had Oscar buzz” pile: even with legendary costume designer Sandy Powell involved and obvious awards-bait trappings, its “poor reception canceled out its chances to make an impact” in the 2008 Oscar race . Translation: this was supposed to be prestige — it landed as pretty soap.

Leaks, Cuts & Wild Trivia

• Benedict Cumberbatch, long before superstardom, played Mary Boleyn’s husband William Carey — and fans argue some of his best material was chopped out. A period-drama blogger gushes that “some of his best stuff got cut” and urges viewers to hunt down the deleted scenes for more Cumberbatch content . Early-career Benedict, lost to the edit bay? A crime.

• Fan commentary online also delights in pointing out how wildly miscast or misused some of the now‑famous actors are: baby Eddie Redmayne in a blink‑and‑you’ll‑miss‑him part, Cumberbatch nearly invisible, Jim Sturgess as tragic brother George, all stuffed into a script that many reviewers say feels “severely edited” and gutted ^[8][10].

The Fandom Verdict: Camp Classic or Tudor Trash?

• On Reddit and fan forums, viewers roast the movie for everything from the American/Australian leads’ accents (“they casted American actors attempting to speak with an English accent lol”) to Portman’s “hysterical all the time” Anne . At the same time, they begrudgingly admit the costumes are lush and the melodrama can be delicious if you accept it as high-budget fanfic, not history ^[6][12].

• Between the alleged feud whispers, the confirmed reshoots, the boob-quote press chaos, and the Cumberbatch deletion disaster, The Other Boleyn Girl has quietly become what it always secretly wanted to be: not a respectable period biopic, but a cult gossip artifact of late‑2000s prestige‑flop Hollywood.