Though Tarantino never made a secret out of how much he adored Thurman, practically worshipping her during the press tour for Kill Bill: Volume 1, it turns out that the venerated director put Thurman in an incredibly dangerous situation during the filming of Kill Bill. The incident shook Thurman so deeply that it took the actress years to open up about it.
During a February 2018 interview with The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, Thurman detailed her numerous struggles with Tarantino. The actress explained that she tried to speak with Tarantino about her horrible experiences with disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein, who has faced dozens of allegations of sexual abuse and was convicted of rape in May 2018, and received no help from him.
Beyond that, Tarantino also required Thurman to perform a driving stunt on the set of Kill Bill: Volume 2 that nearly killed her. Thurman requested a stunt double for the dangerous sequence — she, an actress not professionally trained in stunt work, felt uncomfortable performing it herself — but Tarantino reportedly wasn't happy with that appeal.
As Thurman told Dowd, "Quentin came in my trailer and didn't like to hear no, like any director. He was furious because I'd cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: 'I promise you the car is fine. It's a straight piece of road. Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won't blow the right way and I'll make you do it again.' But that was a deathbox that I was in. The seat wasn't screwed down properly. It was a sand road and it was not a straight road."
As it turned out, the car was far from fine, and Thurman was unable to control it while performing the scene. The actress finally acquired footage of the stunt gone wrong in 2018, and the video, featured in the Times article, certainly isn't for the faint of heart. While slightly turning the steering wheel as the road twisted, Thurman had to wrestle with the vehicle, which veered off the road and slammed into a palm tree. Thurman's torso was "heaving helplessly" before crew members arrived to "pull her out of the wreckage."
In the video, Tarantino is seen coming to Thurman's aid as well, giving her a bottle of water and speaking with her. In Thurman's own words, the conversation wasn't pleasant. Describing the accident and her resultant injuries to Dowd, Thurman said, "The steering wheel was at my belly and my legs were jammed under me. I felt this searing pain and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm never going to walk again.' When I came back from the hospital in a neck brace with my knees damaged and a large massive egg on my head and a concussion, I wanted to see the car and I was very upset. Quentin and I had an enormous fight, and I accused him of trying to kill me. And he was very angry at that, I guess understandably, because he didn't feel he had tried to kill me."
Thurman also shared that she suffered permanent damage to both her neck and knees as a result of the accident.
