Astrid Stawiarz/Getty ImagesUPDATE: Jennifer Lawrence herself just posted on Facebook about the fight rumor:
"Hey guys! It's Jen! I know I don't go on here a lot because I can barely work email but there's been a terrible rumor going around the last 24 hours so I wanted to clear it up. David O. Russell is one of my closest friends and we have an amazing collaborative working relationship. I adore this man and he does not deserve this tabloid malarkey. This movie is going great and I'm having a blast making it!"
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Call it part of the David O. Russell playbook?
In response to word getting around that the reputedly tempestuous director was screaming at Jennifer Lawrence on the set of their latest film and they got into a heated exchange, a studio rep acknowledged the exchange—but said it was all method acting.
A Fox 2000 says that Russell was just getting Lawrence amped up for a scene in which she has to yell at someone, noting, "David's process is, when they yell rolling, he will repeat the line in the tone he wants."
He did direct her to an Oscar-winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook and a nominated turn in American Hustle, so... maybe that's just how Russell does it.
The five-time Oscar-nominated writer-director raised a lot of eyebrows in 2007 when a video of him railing at I Heart Huckabees star Lily Tomlin went viral (and lives on to this day), but ultimately a number of his colleagues came forward to defend his seemingly prickly ways.
"It's just hard to understand unless you're part of the club in a certain respect," I Heart Huckabees cinematographer Peter Deming told the Los Angeles Times after the Tomlin video went public. "When people see this clip, particularly if you're not in the film business, they'd think, 'This guy's insane!' But he's not. Things happen when you're in this machine that's been rolling along for several months."
Russell has gotten a lot of his old gang back together for Joy, including Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Édgar Ramírez, Elizabeth Röhm and Diane Ladd also star in the drama about a Long Island single mom (played by J.Law) who starts her own business and ends up becoming wildly successful.
On Tuesday, when they shot the emotional scene in question, production wrapped early, with Russell figuring Lawrence had been through enough for one day.
Also regarding TMZ's report about über-producer Harvey Weinstein making an unannounced visit to the set on Tuesday but being asked to leave for fear so that his presence wouldn't be a distraction, a rep for Weinstein tells E! News, "Harvey's visit was scheduled. Everyone from the cast and crew knew he was coming to see Jennifer Lawrence. He had some business to discuss with her. He stayed for about an hour and left. He was never thrown off the set."
Fox 2000 also clarified that Weinstein never went to the set, but rather met with Lawrence at the production's base camp in the Boston area. Lawrence has been spotted out and about making her way through the snow multiple times over the past week.
(Originally published Feb. 27, 2015, at 12:53 p.m. PT)