Former NHL player, New York Ranger and human embodiment of nails on a chalkboard, Sean Avery, used to get paid to piss people off on an ice rink. Now, it seems like he's doing it completely free of charge out in the real world.
Avery, who gave up hockey to pursue a variety of other interests, including but not limited to, fashion design, real estate and now acting, has been fired from the off-Broadway play in which he was slated to make his debut after some agitating and aggressive behavior, according to a report from Stephanie Smith of the NY Post.
Avery had what Smith describes as a "Shia LaBeouf-style meltdown" on the set of the play, "Negative Is Positive" just two days before opening night after a poor, unsuspecting stage manager named Natalie made the most egregious of errors and offered the aspiring thespian a slice of pizza.
Avery politely declined, and then somewhere something in his brain misfired and he decided that the stage manager had called him an "a-hole."
"He said I was 'talking s-t' and said I was 'so full of s-t,'" Natalie told the Post. "That's when I realized that I was dealing with a madman."
Shortly thereafter, Avery defiantly told director Andreas Robertz, "Don't you know who I am?!" and stormed out.
"I think something snapped in him," said Robertz.
"He's a playwright's worst nightmare," the play's author Christy Smith-Sloman said. "It's a complete horror story ... Avery had a complete meltdown in rehearsals and quit. He pretty much snapped."
Avery is, unsurprisingly, not welcome back to the set.
"It's unbelievable he would do this two days before we open," Smith-Sloman said. "At this point I don't want him to be a part of this production. He can't call people pieces of s-t and say, 'Do you know who I am?' [He] can't threaten people."
In light of this incident, one is forced to wonder if maybe Avery has duped us all.
Maybe he's really the greatest actor our generation has ever seen, and he's simply continuing the act he started all those years ago as a young hockey player. Maybe playing the role of the agitator is so deeply ingrained in him that he can't help it from bleeding over into each and every character he'll play for the rest of his life - real or imagined.
If so, that's some serious commitment.
