“12 Years a Slave” screenwriter John Ridley exclusively tells Page Six his apparent snub of director Steve McQueen wasn’t intentional.
“Listen, without Steve McQueen, I wouldn’t have this Oscar tonight,” Ridley said at Vanity Fair’s party after winning for Best Adapted Screenplay. “I owe a lot to the genius of Steve McQueen, and I am forever grateful to have had the chance to work with him.”
Asked if omitting McQueen’s name onstage was intentional, Ridley told us, “Of course not. I had less than two minutes to thank everybody, and I was so caught up in the emotion of the moment when I was onstage.”
Ridley sparked speculation when he failed to mention McQueen, and Hollywood blogs reported on a disagreement over the screenplay’s credit.
Rumors of a rift burbled at London’s BAFTAs last month, where, sources told us, McQueen exploded at Ridley at a party.
But sources close to McQueen said it was a misunderstanding between McQueen and Ridley’s wife — that when the director arrived for a private dinner at the Edition Hotel and noticed some friends weren’t there, he exclaimed, “Where the f - - k is everyone? No one is here!”
“Ridley’s wife thought Steve was talking to her, she was upset,” said a source, adding McQueen later called to apologize.
But Ridley — who’s moved on to ABC’s upcoming “American Crime” — added on Sunday night, further quashing the beef: “It was Steve’s wife who found Solomon Northup’s book [on which his screenplay’s based]. It was a great honor [to work on the film], but also a challenge because I wanted to be true to him, to turn Solomon’s eloquent words into a screenplay.”