Scott Eastwood has reflected on the loss of his late girlfriend, Jewel Brangman, and the impact it had on him.
Brangman was killed in a car accident on September 14, 2014, while Eastwood, then 28, was working on set when he received the news. The 26-year-old aspiring model was driving a 2001 Honda Civic from San Diego to Los Angeles when she rear-ended a van.
Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard on August 3, 2026, the actor looked back on the tragedy. He and Brangman had been together for three to four years when the crash happened.
“They had a recall on the airbag and what would’ve been a fender bender that probably most people would’ve survived. She was essentially shot by the airbag.”
The tragic accident was caused by a faulty Takata airbag that exploded upon impact. Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration both determined that her death was caused by the defective airbag. Brangman was the eighth person killed by exploding Takata airbags, which led to what became the largest automotive recall in U.S. history, affecting tens of millions of vehicles.
Eastwood went on to describe how difficult it is to process grief while still being expected to keep filming, especially after having already experienced another major loss not long before.
“As you know, being on a film set when someone passes or something happens, it’s really tough because, and this had happened [to me] before. I had lost Paul Walker on Fury.”
Eastwood and Walker had formed a close friendship after first meeting during the filming of Flags of Our Fathers in 2006. Walker later died in a crash in Santa Clarita, California, on November 30, 2013, at the age of 40. At that time, Eastwood was shooting the 2014 war film Fury.
Describing the demands of working through personal tragedy, Eastwood said there is rarely room to stop and process what has happened.
“When you’re on a film set, you don’t have time to grieve, because the show must go on.”
Shepard responded by pointing out how surreal that situation can be for an actor.
“You might be filming the happiest scene your character has an hour after you hear this.”
Eastwood agreed, explaining that productions do not pause for personal grief.
“You can’t fly home, you’ve got to work, your stuck,” Clint Eastwood’s son said.
Looking back on that day, the Suicide Squad actor said he pushed the pain aside in order to keep going, only dealing with it later.
He said he ‘did a classic defense mechanism, compartmentalizing it until later,’ and acknowledged in hindsight that it was not the healthiest response.
Reflecting on that, he admitted that’s ‘not a great thing’.
“You do want to grieve with the people that are around, that were a part of their life as well. That’s an important part of the grieving process.”
This is not the first time Eastwood has spoken publicly about Brangman’s death and how deeply it affected him.
In a 2016 interview with GQ Australia, given two years after the accident, he spoke candidly about losing someone he had shared such a close relationship with.
“I’ve lost friends before; I’ve lost some great friends. But, I had never lost someone I had been really intimate with, you know, like in that way, in a relationship.”
At the time, he also said he had still not reached out to Brangman’s father, explaining that he ‘still hadn’t found the right words’.
He added:
“I think that really affected me in a way that… I don’t know. Maybe it’s made it harder for me to date,” he added.
Elsewhere in the conversation with Shepard, Eastwood also discussed tension behind the scenes while working on Fury. He claimed Brad Pitt had to intervene during a heated exchange between him and Shia LaBeouf.
Recalling the incident, Eastwood said the argument began over him spitting tobacco on a tank, which he noted was part of the script.
“One day, he was having an episode and, you know, thought that I shouldn’t be spitting tobacco on the tank…which was in the script,” he recalled of the moment.
Eastwood said the disagreement escalated after he lost patience.
“Hey, f**k you. Stop pulling your s**t… I’m going to whoop your ass,” Eastwood recalled saying after ‘losing patience’ with Labeouf who he said became ‘froggy’ before Pitt stepped in to intervene.
He added that clashes involving LaBeouf were not unusual during production.
“Everyone had moments with Shia that were, I think at one point going to come to blows or not,” he claimed.