"Never been so scared": Uma Thurman reveals how her love for red heels landed her in a police car

Aashna
A shot of Uma Thurman on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Image via YouTube/The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon)
A shot of Uma Thurman on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Image via YouTube/The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon)

Uma Thurman may have built a celebrated career playing some of Hollywood's most memorable characters, but one of her earliest brushes with the law had a rather unexpected culprit: a pair of red high heels.

The Golden Globe Award-winning actress, best known for playing Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and The Bride in Kill Bill, recently appeared in an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. While Uma Thurman has built a reputation for playing morally grey, complex, and boundary-pushing characters, she recalled that her 'first brush with the law' at age 3 was over 'red high-heeled shoes'.

While candidly talking about the incident, Thurman recalled how she was scared at the time:

"I remember it so well because I've never been so scared in my entire life, because I really thought I was getting arrested. And I sort of was."

The time Uma Thurman almost got arrested over a pair of red heels

As Uma Thurman recalled on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the incident dates back to when she was 3 or 4 years old, and her family first moved to Amherst, Massachusetts. As her father, who was a teacher, drove the family to their new faculty housing, a 3-year-old Thurman noticed a pair of 'red high-heeled shoes' in a shoe store window. It looks like the actress instantly took a liking to the pair. The next day, while Thurman's mother took a nap, she went off to the store with 75 cents.

Uma Thurman's adventure went well as she arrived at the shoe store, tried on the red heels, agreed that they fit, and eventually handed the 75 cents to the owner. But things took a turn when the store owner realized Thurman's mother was not coming, and he called the police. To add to her misery, the actress did not know the name of the street where she lived, which eventually landed her in the back of the 'squad car.'

This is how Uma Thurman narrated the incident to Jimmy Fallon:

"So this probably very friendly but terrifying police officer held me on his lap in the back of the squad car. And I was so scared, and they just kept driving around. But at that point, I couldn't recognize my house."

The actress revealed that her adventure came to a halt when the police spotted her mother 'screaming in the street' for Thurman, which was a dead giveaway that they found her 'mom'.

Capping off the hilarious encounter, Uma Thurman linked her adventure to Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Having just moved to a new town, Thurman revealed that maybe she wanted to return where she came from and mistook the red heels for Dorothy's red slippers:

"So from a young age, I just get ideas, and I kind of think it was that I must have wanted to go back where I came from, and I saw the red shoes and thought they were, like, red slippers...I want to just go home...Dorothy."

Uma Thurman is set to return in Dexter: Resurrection Season 2 as Charley Brown, Leon Prater's (Peter Dinklage) right-hand and head of security. The second season of the crime-drama series will be released on Paramount+ Showtime on October 30.

The second season marks the return of Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, Jack Alcott as Harrison Morgan, and David Zayas as Angel Batista. Additionally, Brian Cox, Dan Stevens, Bokeem Woodbine, Nona Parker Johnson and Desmond Harrington have joined the cast in Season 2.

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Edited by Aashna