Shia LaBeouf says he still talks to the police officer who arrested him back in 2017.
While appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Wednesday night, the actor, 33, spoke about his relationship with the Georgia police officer who booked him for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct and obstruction at the time.
“Is it true that you now keep in touch with the police officer who arrested you?” Kimmel asked and LaBeouf immediately replied, “Officer Bryant. That’s my guy…He invited me to go fishing yesterday.”
The late-night host laughed and then pointed out, “I imagine when that incident occurred you didn’t think you’d be a fishing buddy with this guy.”
“Oh no, I f–king hated him,” LaBeouf said. “But, you know, life…it takes interesting turns.”
LaBeouf was busted in 2017 after asking a bystander and police officer for a cigarette and became disorderly when he didn’t get one. It escalated and he became aggressive, before then making racist statements about the black arresting officer once in police custody. LaBeouf was filming “The Peanut Butter Falcon” at the time.
LaBeouf was at the late-night show to promote his film, “Honey Boy,” a movie inspired by his own life growing up in Hollywood and all the highs and lows that came with it. The star wrote the screenplay for the film during his time in court-ordered rehab, after his arrest at the hands of Officer Bryant, as a form of treatment to cope with his PTSD.
“Well, they said, ‘You have PTSD, you have to start writing. This is how you get to the solution. The only way out is through.'” LaBeouf recalled. “So I started writing all these dark chapters of my life and it wound up being this script form thing, sent it to my friend, became a movie.”
In “Honey Boy,” which already boasts a near-perfect score of 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, LaBeouf plays his father, while Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges portray young and adult versions of LaBeouf.
LaBeouf told Kimmel that his father wasn’t thrilled about his son playing him, so he told his dad Mel Gibson was portraying him instead.
“My dad’s a pretty off-color character, he wasn’t too enthused about me playing him,” LaBeouf recalled. “So I lied to him and told him that Mel Gibson would be playing him.”
“Then he signed the paperwork, and I got home and I broke it to him,” he continued. “I sent him pictures. I said, ‘Listen man, it’s not like that.'”
Before his time in rehab, LaBeouf said he planned on quitting acting and considered joining the Peace Corps — and had even signed up. However, LaBeouf said that after he spent two months writing “this thing” (a.k.a. ‘Honey Boy’) his “plans changed.”
“So when I got out, I wasn’t going to do the Peace Corps no more,” LaBeouf said. “So we had a conversation about it, they were very peaceful about it.”
Later in the interview, Kimmel asked LaBeouf about his friendship with Kanye West. The rapper “somewhat famously” went through LaBeouf’s closet to “gather ideas.”
“We’re buddies…He came over, we were doing some art thing,” LaBeouf said. “And then he was like, ‘Hey man, do you mind if I go look in your closet?’ I’m like, ‘[You’re] Kanye West. Go wherever you want to go. Do whatever you want to do.'”
See more from LaBeouf’s interview with Kimmel in the clip, above.
“Honey Boy” hits theaters this Friday.
Got a story or a tip for us? Email TooFab editors at [email protected].