Shia LaBeouf claimed that he doesn’t have a drink problem or need to go to rehab, days before getting arrested again on a count of simple battery.
Court records showed that the 39-year-old actor was arrested Saturday in New Orleans. However, it is not clear whether the new charge of simple battery is connected to the February 17 brawl outside the Royal Street Inn & R Bar, where he allegedly attacked two bartenders and repeatedly used homophobic slurs.
He was first arrested earlier this month after the bar incident on Mardi Gras. He was later released on his own recognizance and charged with two counts of simple battery.
The Holes star addressed the alleged bar fight in a newly released interview with Andrew Callaghan on Channel 5, filmed one week after his initial arrest. He said that while he has to deal with “his behavior,” he doesn’t necessarily think he needs to go to rehab.
“I’m just not into it, bro,” he said. “I don’t think my answers are there. I don’t. I really, genuinely, don’t. If I genuinely did, I’d go. I don’t think I have a drinking problem.”
LaBeouf, who was ordered by a judge in New Orleans Thursday to go to rehab, instead argued that he struggles with a Napoleon complex. The term is often used to describe a shorter man who displays aggressive behavior.
“I think I have a small man problem,” he said. “I don’t know what it is. I think it’s something that has to do with anger and ego more so than my drinking, but that’s where I’m at now on my journey, and I’m trying to navigate it.”
When Callaghan asked him what sets off that anger, LaBeouf claimed that “big gay people are scary to” him.
“I’m like, standing by myself and three gay dudes are next to me, touching my leg, I get scared. I’m sorry, if that’s homophobic, then I’m that,” he said, before claiming that this happened to him during Mardi Gras before his arrest.
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“I am wrong for touching anyone ever. And that’s the end of my statement on this whole s***,” the actor concluded.
After LaBeouf’s release from jail earlier this month, one of the victims he allegedly attacked in the bar, Jeffrey Damnit, asked prosecutors to upgrade the Transformers star’s charges.
Damnit said he ran into the actor around 5 p.m. on February 16, when the LaBeouf allegedly knocked him over. He recalled to The Hollywood Reporter, “Then he turned around screaming, ‘Don’t you f***ing push me. I’ll kill you.’ I hadn’t touched him.”
He said he tried to de-escalate the situation, but LaBeouf allegedly then shoved a finger in his face and called him a homophobic slur.
Damnit, an actor who visits New Orleans several times a year, told local Fox affiliate WVUE that he wants LaBeouf to be charged with a hate crime.
During LaBeouf’s court appearance Thursday, New Orleans Criminal District Court judge Simone Levine set his bail at $100,000 and ordered him to seek treatment. Levine said her biggest concern was the possible danger LaBeouf poses not only to his alleged victims, but to the wider community as a whole, in particular the “marginalized community” that has faced so much “terror.”
In addition to the $100,000 bail and mandated rehab, LaBeouf is also required to undergo a drug testing program upon his release.
Ahead of the hearing, LaBeouf — who did a court-ordered rehab stint in 2017 after a disorderly conduct arrest in Georgia — was required to take a drug and alcohol test.
While his attorney, Sarah Chervinsky, insisted the results did not show her client under the influence of alcohol or any illegal substances, Levine still expressed worry that the test results showed that the actor “does not take his alcohol addiction seriously.”
