Chris Evans Had One Really Bad Day Filming Knives Out And Rian Johnson's Sorry

Chris Evans as Ransom in Knives Out
(Image credit: (Lionsgate))

Being an actor can certainly be a glamorous job. Sometimes they get paid to get into the best shape of their life by the most qualified trainers and nutritionists… that is, if you get cast in a Marvel movie. But sometimes one role contradicts the other, and this hilariously happened on the set of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out with Chris Evans.

Once Chris Evans finished off his tenure as Captain America for Avengers: Endgame, he jumped on the set of the modern whodunnit starring the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Craig, Michael Shannon and more. Evans played the cable-knit sweater-wearing Ransom, lovingly known as “America’s Asshole.” And Rian Johnson feels bad about one seemingly small choice he made that Evans had to pay for later. In the writer/director’s words while he re-watched a key scene in Knives Out:

Yum, look at those cookies. Delicious. These are those Belgium cookies right here and actually when we screened the movie at the Gent Film Festival in Belgium everyone was so excited that we had these cookies in there. They were like, ‘Belgium cookies!’ They’re very buttery and I picked them just because they looked cool.

During one of Ransom’s first moments in Knives Out, he’s downing Belgium cookies that Rian Johnson picked just because “they looked cool.” But now he feels bad about having Chris Evans eat them. He continued:

Then, poor Chris, anytime you see an actor eating food in a scene pity that actor because they’ve had to eat that food all day long. These cookies, you eat like two of them, and you feel like your throat is coated in butter. Chris was pounding these all day long. So, I feel very bad for him.

Oops! For the record, he’s being a little hard on himself. If a bad day for Chris Evans is putting away a bunch of buttery cookies, then he has it good. The actor is no stranger to a rough day on set. He’s been in his full-fledged Cap suit on a hot Atlanta set for hours and hours upon end. The actor was probably just happy thinking about how he can eat whatever he wants and not have to lose it all back for another Marvel film for the first time in ten years.

The tidbit (or crumpet, if you will) comes via a Vanity Fair video where Rian Johnson breaks down the scene in Knives Out right before the star-studded cast read the will Christopher Plummer’s Harlan Thrombey has left behind. During that viewing, he also noted that Apple will not allow villains in movies to have iPhones. That's a good tip about how to figure things out.

Knives Out was a big success on many fronts. It scored $300 million at the box office worldwide, nabbed an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and Rian Johnson is already working on a sequel. It will feature Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc solving another mystery in a completely different setting and a brand-new cast. However, Johnson will not be exploring the southern detectives origins in some sort of prequel. Knives Out 2 will be more in the vein of another Agatha Christie novel.

Knives Out is currently available on digital, Blu-ray and DVD.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.