In case you weren’t clued in by the fact that Lindsay Lohan‘s immediate response to getting her first acting role in forever was “become a train wreck!”, Lifetime’s Liz & Dick is probably going to be a masterpiece adored for ages to come. Now we have actual proof, as The Daily Beast has taken it upon themselves to bring us eight of the most shocking moments in the script, below you’ll find the first moment …
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s initial first meeting on the set of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra is anything but a meet-cute, as she takes instant umbrage to his “Has anyone told you that you’re a very pretty girl” line and then they later viciously insult each other from side-by-side tables at a restaurant. We’re meant to see both the venom and the passion here, something summed up by the cruel bon mots each tosses to the other like verbal grenades. Despite the seeming animosity, the two quickly fall into a torrid romance, even though both are married: he to Welsh actress Sybil Williams and she to actor Eddie Fisher.
When Fisher returns to Rome from New York—where he had been appearing in a show—he discovers a party in full swing, with Liz and Dick ruling over the revelers. It’s here that Burton casually tells Fisher that he’s sleeping with Taylor (“Oh, I’m sleeping with your wife.”) and, in front of the entire party, he forces Taylor to choose between him and Fisher. Not surprisingly, Taylor proclaims her love for Burton. The viewer is encouraged to see this as perhaps spontaneous and romantic, but it is jaw-dropping for the public nature of the declaration and the matter-of-fact way Burton informs Fisher of his wife’s infidelity. (The very public Burton-Taylor-Fisher triangle is the precursor—as Eddie Fisher’s daughter, Carrie Fisher, has suggested in her show, Wishful Drinking—for the modern-day battle between Brangelina and Jennifer Aniston, another romantic imbroglio that has churned out endless headlines.)
There are another seven scenes detailed in the Beast’s post, you can barely tell it was written by the same network who gave us My Stepson, My Lover and Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. I’m sure we can all look forward to watching this on Sunday afternoons at our parents house when we return home for the weekend because it wouldn’t kill you to visit every once in a while, right?
