Dan Stevens Recalls When Shia LaBeouf Disrupted One of His Broadway Performances: “I wish I’d had a broadsword then”

Though Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is billed as the final movie in the fantasy series, it still incorporates some new blood into the mix alongside franchise favorites like Ben Stiller and Robin Williams. The most significant new addition is Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey, who plays Lancelot. Lancelot doesn’t realize that he’s a museum exhibit and in one of the film’s quirkiest moments, he invades a West End production of Camelot when he mistakes it for the real thing. Being that Stevens has stage experience, he confessed in an interview with Vulture that during his 2012-2013 Broadway debut in The Heiress that he had to face his own audience distraction. And wouldn’t you know it — Shia LaBeouf was responsible.

He recalls, “Shia LaBeouf showed up loaded during a performance of The Heiress and was pretty disruptive.” When the interviewer points out that LaBeouf actually got arrested for doing something similar during a performance of Cabaret earlier this year, Stevens remarks, “I know! And they managed to escort him out. But our play, they weren’t quite on the ball during The Heiress.”

He elaborates on the situation with LaBeouf by adding, “I don’t know if he was smoking, but he was definitely hollering, and I think he thought he was in Cabaret while watching The Heiress. That was a pretty strange onstage experience, I have to say. And for the first half, we didn’t know who it was. And then we came off [during intermission], and Jessica Chastain, who had just worked with him in Lawless, was like [whispers], ‘I think it’s Shia!’ And yeah, by the end of the play, it was definitely him. [Chuckles.] There’s a history of actors breaking character and coming out and telling groups of schoolchildren to shut up and behave, or whatever. As an actor, you wonder, What would I do? And there have been moments where someone is eating very loudly or is just being very disruptive, and you think, Oh yeah, I wish I could step out and actually do something about it. But I have yet to really do that. Someday, maybe. I wish I’d had a broadsword then.”