Sylvester Stallone Once Said Talia Shire Was a Little Upset About Being Written out of ‘Rocky Balboa’

Sylvester Stallone’s popular and iconic Rocky franchise always had a roster of familiar faces that fans of the series had grown attached to. Talia Shire was a recurring and significant presence on the show having played Stallone’s love interest for five films.

But Shire’s character was eventually written out of the series. It was news that Stallone broke to Shire personally.

Sylvester Stallone told Talia Shire she’d be written out the ‘Rocky’ franchise

Talia Shire’s Adrian has been around from the very beginning of Stallone’s Rocky series. She won the role through a simple audition process, and became one of the main pillars of the franchise ever since. Shire’s journey as the character came to an end with the sixth film Rocky Balboa, but initially Stallone planned on having her stick around.

“In the original script for [Rocky Balboa], she was alive,” Stallone once told USA Today. “But it just didn’t have the same dramatic punch. I thought, ‘What if she’s gone?’ That would cut Rocky’s heart out and drop him down to ground zero.”

But even with the character no longer being around physically, Stallone asserted she was as much a part of Rocky’s journey as she’d always been.

“I told her, ‘Talia, you’re the heart and soul of this movie, but you’re just here in spirit, and that’s what’s going to drive the film. Your heart drove the first film.’ It’s what I call ‘The Adrian Factor,’” Stallone said.

Stallone quipped in an interview with Mark Walters that Shire was slightly upset when she first heard the news. But what little disappointment she might have had with Stallone’s decision gave way when the actor explained her character’s purpose.

“I told her, ‘Here’s the good news, I think I figured out the story. I think it works, it really works. Bad news is…we start off at your gravesite,’” he said. “Actually, she was really great, she’s very supportive, once she understood. She comes from a very film-literate family. So she gets it. She understood.”

How Talia Shire was prepared for her character’s fate

Shire had a much deeper connection to her character’s fate given her real-life circumstances. The actor already knew what it was like to lose a loved one. This made Adrian’s fate resonate with her even more.

“Sly showed me the script because he knew I’d lost my husband [producer Jack Schwartzman]. When Jack was alive, he and I were producing movies, so I was doing much less acting and more development,” Shire said.

But after she heard the news, her biggest concern of the film wasn’t whether or not she’d be in it. But rather, Stallone’s execution of Rocky Balboa.

“I was aware of the possibility of Adrian being in it and dying, but my being in the movie or not was not as interesting as how Sylvester was going to achieve this,” she said. “Ultimately, I was wondering how in the world he was going to justify getting Rocky back into the ring.”

When Shire saw the film, it seemed she was more than pleased by the feature. She’d even had a very visceral reaction to one of the most climactic moments in Rocky Balboa.

“I lost a button on my blouse because I had an explosive moment in the boxing ring [scene], because I felt that fight was really about a man going up against time and love and courage. Adrian wasn’t there, but she was very much within him,” she said.

Sylvester Stallone felt Talia Shire deserved more recognition for ‘Rocky’

Stallone believed that Shire’s performance was crucial for the success of the Rocky franchise. But he felt his co-star’s contributions towards the films weren’t recognized enough.

“I don’t think that she was ever given the full credit for the success of the whole Rocky series because without her there is no him. He just wanted to redeem himself, that he wasn’t a bum from the neighborhood and that, in his eyes, he could look in the mirror. ‘Wow I amounted to something,’ and that was due to her,” Stallone once said in the documentary The Making of Rocky Vs. Drago.