Inside Shia LaBeouf’s meltdown on The Rooster Prince set and the pain behind it

On The Rooster Prince, Shia LaBeouf pushed himself to the edge, according to director Josh Penn Soskin. He says LaBeouf "exploded" on set, blurring performance and pain, and capped a scene with an improvised line that gave him goosebumps.

Not Just Acting – Living It, Apparently

Soskin’s approach with LaBeouf wasn’t for the faint-hearted. The film centres on a man living through a severe bipolar episode. Why? Because Soskin based it on his own late brother, David — a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who suffered a manic episode in 2017, then tragically died by suicide. The project has always been stitched together from years of grief and struggle, which Soskin actually describes as ‘cinema-catharsis’. And you really do feel that weight coming through in how Soskin talks about everything that happened next.

LaBeouf, once he read the script, basically flung himself into the role in a way Soskin calls ‘nearly religious’. Rather than just learning his lines, LaBeouf went and memorised David’s books, and started insisting it felt like David was actually speaking to him — which, if you think about it, is both touching and more than a little unsettling.

‘Exploding’ on Set: Fights, Tears, and Something Like a Trip

Soskin doesn’t sugar-coat what the shoot was like. Here’s how he put it:

‘Shia was in deep pain – in even more pain than all the pain he was causing.’

Make of that what you will, but it’s clear LaBeouf’s method approach was full intensity, all the time. According to Soskin, the atmosphere could swing dramatically: one day they’d be at each other’s throats, and the next, literally embracing. He even likened the whole experience to ‘less like a movie and more like an Ayahuasca trip’ — which, I’m sorry, is not something you hear on your average behind-the-scenes Blu-ray extra.

And then came a moment that made the director’s hair stand on end. During a late-night rehearsal, LaBeouf veered off-script and asked, out of nowhere, to be treated with ‘maximum empathy’. Soskin describes how ‘there were tears in his eyes. And now mine. Goosebumps spiked the skin on my arms.’ Absolutely no subtlety — it hit everyone hard enough that Soskin shared the phrase with the crew at the next day’s shoot, pointing out that his brother and his lead actor might have been asking for exactly the same thing.

What’s Fact, What’s Fiction: A Quick Timeline

• Story is inspired by Josh Penn Soskin’s brother David, who was both a psychiatrist and someone who suffered with bipolar disorder, ultimately dying in 2017
• Soskin shaped his own grief into the film’s script over several years
• Shia LaBeouf gets the script and dives in, learning David’s work and reportedly becoming obsessed with the role
• Filming kicked off in late October 2025 and wrapped December that year
• Production was reportedly volatile, with wild mood swings and extreme performances on set
• That unscripted plea for ‘maximum empathy’ comes late one night — LaBeouf tears up, so does his director, and the phrase makes it into the film’s lore immediately
• After filming wraps, LaBeouf finds himself in legal trouble — he’s sentenced to two years probation for an unrelated altercation down in New Orleans, February 2026

No Easy Answers, Only Intensity

Soskin wraps up his letter essentially by calling LaBeouf’s performance in The Rooster Prince the ‘truest depiction of mental illness I’ve ever seen on camera’. Given the genuinely fraught – and at times frankly chaotic – process described here, that comes as no surprise. Whatever you were expecting from a film inspired by someone’s actual heartbreak, with this particular cast and crew, it’s fair to say they left absolutely nothing at the door.