Among the headline-grabbing revelations in his new memoir Who Knew, Fox Broadcasting Company co-founder Barry Diller sheds light on John Travolta’s infamous exit from 1980’s American Gigolo, claiming that the star was spooked by the film’s “somewhat gay subtext.”

As The Hollywood Reporter (THR) notes, hot off the success of Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978), Travolta was originally attached to play the lead role of high-priced male escort Julian Kay in American Gigolo. But Travolta famously backed out of the Paul Schrader-written and directed film as it was going into production.

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In his memoir, Diller, who was chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures at the time, recalls doubting Travolta’s excuses for exiting the film. He recounts a scene in which the actor cried in then Paramount president Michael Eisner’s office, claiming that he couldn’t do the film because he was still mourning the losses of both his girlfriend Diana Hyland and his mother.

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“Michael came down to my office and said, ‘John’s just left, and we have to let him out of the movie because he just can’t do it,’” Diller writes. “I said, ‘He’s faking it and using you. It’s too late to recast and he’s perfect for it.’” 

According to THR, Diller writes that he “was certain [Travolta] had acted his way through his meeting with Michael” and that the real reason the actor wanted out of the film was that “he was afraid of playing that character because of its somewhat gay subtext.”

Diller writes that he tried to convince Travolta to ignore the advice of his “twerpy, inexperienced manager” at the time and to stick with the film, but he was unsuccessful.

Travolta was ultimately replaced by Richard Gere, who didn’t share the Grease star’s concerns. In fact, Gere told Entertainment Weekly in 2012 that the film’s queer subtext was actually part of what attracted him to the role of Julian. “I read it and I thought, ‘This is a character I don’t know very well. I don’t own a suit. He speaks languages; I don’t speak any languages. There’s kind of a gay thing that’s flirting through it and I didn’t really know the gay community at all.’ I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had literally two weeks. So I just dove in,” Gere recalled.

As THR notes, Diller’s account of Travolta’s exit from American Gigolo echoes Schrader’s own.

“Three things happened,” the director told THR in a September 2024 interview. “First, his mother died, which hit him hard. Two, he had his first mega-flop, a film called Moment to Moment, and that rocked him. And the third was I think he had growing anxiety about the gay subtext [of the film].”

Schrader went on to hint at persistent rumors about Travolta’s sexuality that have dogged the actor for years. “I don’t know if he’s out now, but he was firmly not out back then,” he said. “I don’t know if [it] was true or not, but if it were, it was certainly not something that would be discussed.”

Travolta, who was married to fellow actor Kelly Preston from 1991 until she passed away in 2020, has consistently denied allegations that he is secretly gay.

Diller, meanwhile, has faced similar speculation about his own sexuality for decades. But in an excerpt from Who Knew published in New York Magazine earlier this month, the media mogul explained for the first time that prior to beginning his relationship with fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg in the 1970s, he had only ever been interested in men. Diller writes that as a young man, he made the decision to “live with silence, but not with hypocrisy,” opting never to come out but also never to “do a single thing to make anyone believe I was living a heterosexual life.”

Diller writes that his attraction to von Furstenberg came as a surprise. “I certainly didn’t feel, Oh my God, what does this mean? I was simply existing in the moment, a rare place for me.” 

He adds that despite speculation, he and von Furstenberg, who have been married since 2001, “weren’t just friends. We aren’t just friends.” He said the passion between them was intense and “kept up for years.”

“And, yes, I also liked guys, but that was not a conflict with my love for Diane. I can’t explain it to myself or to the world.”

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