It seems like Quentin Tarantino isn’t beating the foot fetish allegations anytime soon.
During a recent episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Maya Hawke was asked whether her mom, Uma Thurman, shared “any advice about working with Quentin” going into her role in 2019’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
The Stranger Things star had a quick answer, simply responding, “Keep your shoes on,” causing them to laugh in unison.
“Keep ’em on, baby. Keep those shoes on,” Poehler joked in response. “Perfect advice. Perfect.”
As one of Tarantino’s most frequent collaborators, Thurman has a fair share of experience with the filmmaker’s predilection for foot scenes. In 1994’s Pulp Fiction, there are multiple close-ups of her character Mia Wallace’s bare feet.
More infamously, there’s a scene in 2003’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 that zooms in on both of Thurman’s feet as she wiggles her toes to regain feeling in her body after coming out of a coma. Revisit it below.
More recently, Margot Robbie’s soles were featured in a Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood scene for which Tarantino reportedly instructed her not to wash her feet. Margaret Qualley and Dakota Fanning’s bare feet were also seen in the film.
Another frequent Tarantino collaborator, Brad Pitt, actually called him out on it while accepting a SAG Award for his supporting role as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time, saying, “I want to thank my co-stars, [Leonardo DiCaprio], Margot Robbie, Margot Robbie’s feet, Margaret Qualley’s feet, Dakota Fanning’s feet. Seriously, Quentin has separated more women from their shoes than the TSA.”
For his part, Tarantino has defended his camera’s obsession with women’s feet. “There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies. That’s just good direction,” he told GQ in 2021. “Before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director. And Hitchcock was accused of it and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it.”
