Shia LaBeouf has reportedly scored a small, but no doubt personally important, court win in connection with his much-discussed New Orleans arrest.
As reported by the Guardian on Wednesday (March 11), citing court records and unnamed officials, the Henry Johnson actor has been granted permission to travel to Rome for his father’s baptism. Notably, a previous request related to similar travel plans for LaBeouf, 39, was turned down in court last month.
Reportedly key to the follow-up request’s approval, in contrast to the preceding ask, was the inclusion of an itinerary for the week-long trip. A separate report from TMZ notes that LaBeouf is expected to be back in the States for his next scheduled court appearance, slated for March 19.
Complex has reached out to LaBeouf’s lawyer, as well as to an Orleans Parish Criminal District Court official. This story may be updated.
LaBeouf mentioned his father’s then-upcoming baptism in a post-arrest interview with Andrew Callaghan for Channel 5, released in February.
“So my dad’s about to get baptized on Sunday,” he said at the time, adding that he would be making the trip “if the court lets me go.”
LaBeouf played a fictionalized version of his father, Jeffrey, in the well-received 2019 drama Honey Boy, which he also wrote. However, he later expressed regret over the depiction in an interview with his former Fury co-star Jon Bernthal.
As previously reported, LaBeouf was arrested in New Orleans and charged with simple battery amid last month’s Mardi Gras celebrations. An initial statement from a New Orleans Police Department rep shared with Complex said that the Transformers franchise alum had been accused of striking one alleged victim with “closed fists” multiple times, as well as punching another individual in the nose. At one point in the alleged altercation, the actor and performance artist is said to have been “held down” until cops arrived at the scene.
Additional details on the arrest were later made public thanks to the sharing of a redacted version of an incident report from New Orleans police. In it, LaBeouf was accused of having used the f-slur “multiple times.” The aforementioned Channel 5 interview, as of this writing, marks the lone example of substantial public remarks LaBeouf has made about the arrest.