Matthew Broderick’s title character in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” may have been nonchalant — but life on set wasn’t as laid back.
Director John Hughes and actor Broderick didn’t have the easiest relationship when they made the beloved 1986 comedy together.
The “WarGames” star, 61, recalled working with the acclaimed ’80s filmmaker back in the day on a recent episode of the Hollywood Reporter’s “It Happened in Hollywood” podcast.
“He was not easygoing in some ways,” he said of the late “Breakfast Club” auteur — who died in August 2009.
“He was nervous it wouldn’t come out right,” Broderick said, referring to a costume test with the cast.
The “Stepford Wives” actor noted that he and fellow cast members Jennifer Grey, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck and Charlie Sheen strolled around the streets of Chicago rocking their costumes while the camera crew filmed them.
“[The test] was a big drama,” he continued. “When the footage came back, [Hughes] said none of us were ‘fun to watch.’ We were ‘boring’ in our tests. Actually, some of us he did like, but some he did not, and I was one he did not.”
This left Broderick feeling dejected, as his role as slacker Ferris Bueller was one of his first major film roles.
The father of three stated that for Hughes to say to him, “I’m not used to having somebody be so dead,” was soul-crushing.
Broderick remembered that Hughes told him that he “wasn’t really ‘in it’ or something.”
“That happened and I said, ‘So get somebody you like,'” he recalled clapping back at the “Pretty in Pink” director.
Broderick detailed another encounter on set between Hughes and himself that made him feel insecure.
“He said, ‘I like when your eyes go wide, and then smaller, and then go wide again.’ I said, ‘If you tell me exactly what my face is doing, I get kind of self-conscious. Now I’m thinking of my face,” he said on the podcast.
Broderick went on: “And he was like, ‘Well, then, I won’t direct you at all.’ And for a few days he didn’t give me anything. Until I finally had to say, ‘John, you have to direct me, come on.’ That was our worst one.”
Of Hughes’ directing style, Broderick explained that he “took the work very seriously,” was not a “loosey-goosey person” and never “held a grudge.”
The “Election” alum dished: “He was somebody who could get angry at you, not outwardly angry, but you could tell. He would turn dead. Dead-faced, I would say, ‘What did you think of that?’ And he’d say, ‘I don’t know.’ Just nothing. ‘OK. John doesn’t like that.’”
The Post has reached out to Broderick for comment.
