Defections & doubt on set of ‘Roe v. Wade’

Anti-abortion tilt has led cast and crew members to call it quits

Nick Loeb’s polarizing, pro-life “Roe v. Wade” movie faced an onslaught of challenges practically from the get-go.

Cast and crew members dropped out early in production, reportedly because of the film’s anti-abortion slant. A pair of Louisiana universities barred them from filming on their campuses. Controversial castings of right-wing pundits such as Stacey Dash and Tomi Lahren garnered negative attention.

“I have seen some people shake their heads during takes,” Jamie Kennedy, one of the stars of the movie, told the Daily News. “I have seen a couple people leave. We’ve had some false starts and false stops. We’ve had a couple drop out. That is common. It is common in Hollywood to have people leave projects, you know, creative differences and such. It isn’t common so much that most of it, well, probably 95% of it had to do with the material. People are very polarized about the subject.”

The movie, which Loeb is producing and co-directing, is billed as a fact-based depiction of the true story of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court case that ensured women the right to get an abortion. The film features a number of prominent conservative stars, with Jon Voight and Robert Davi among the cast’s biggest names.

Both Kennedy and Loeb say “Roe v. Wade” aims to address the issue from both sides of the abortion fight, though Kennedy acknowledges the movie “definitely has a pro-life tilt to it.”

Loeb confirms several actors have left so far, but he says they’ve only been low-level cast members. Among those who exited, he said, is the actress originally slated to play Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as Jane Roe in the case.

Last week, anonymous crew members who had left the project claimed in a Daily Beast report that people were appalled by the contents of the script — which allegedly included graphic depictions of abortions — once they got to set, and that Loeb and his co-director Cathy Allyn were in over their heads.

Loeb and Allyn took over as codirectors after the movie’s original director backed out.

Two other conservative actors, Kevin Sorbo and Stephen Baldwin, backed out of the project after seeing the script, according to the Daily Beast.

Baldwin had no comment on the situation and declined an interview.

Voight, who has already filmed his part in the movie, told The News he decided to join “Roe v. Wade” because he wanted to show the history of a controversial subject he believes many don’t know much about.

“I think it’s balanced,” Voight said. “It shows all sides. People have this simplistic idea about the history. They don’t know the time. People don’t know what was really going on. I think it will be educational.”