Don’t tell Bronson Pinchot what to do, unless you want it to backfire.

The Perfect Strangers actor recently recalled a humorously tense encounter between himself and Keanu Reeves at a 2010 benefit performance of Much Ado About Nothing for the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles — and none other than Julia Roberts tried to intervene.

“Keanu leans over,” he told Steve Kmetko on a recent episode of the Still Here Hollywood podcast. “He starts to mumble something, I had never even been introduced to him, but he starts to mumble something. I realized, to my horror and delight, that he is giving me extensive direction on how he wants me to play my part.”

Pinchot explained that he was to play Reeves’ henchman. He recalled, “I don’t know what my face looked like, but the next thing I know, because I was listening and trying to take in all the facets of him directing me on how to play comedy, and I’m just taking it in and looking at my options — which are laugh, be polite, commit suicide — all of a sudden, I look up, and Julia Roberts is standing right here.”

“She doesn’t say anything. She offers me her arm as if we’re gonna go to the opera,” he continued. “She starts to walk me away, and her eyes are like chandeliers. She’s so full of glee. When we get out of earshot, she says, ‘Can I just tell you, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in this room, Bronson. A lot, but nothing can come close to you, I’m gonna guess, listening to Keanu Reeves give you direction at length?'”

Pinchot told her that was correct. “‘That’s what I thought,” she told him. “‘It’s the funniest two-shot I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s genius, and now I’m going to take you back and deliver you back to Keanu Reeves, Bronson.'”

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to reps for Roberts and Reeves.

Neither Pinchot, Reeves, nor Roberts had starred in a movie with each other, according to Pinchot, the three hadn’t previously met, and they haven’t appeared in a film in any combination since. The performance of Much Ado About Nothing also starred Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt and was staged to raise money for the Los Angeles’ performing arts institution, which has been around for nearly 40 years.

Pinchot engaged in a bit of what they call “malicious compliance” by deciding to “hew” to Reeves’ directions to shadow him around the stage “with every fiber of my being.” The actor said that his deliberately irritating gambit drew major laughs, to Reeves chagrin and Roberts’ delight.

“So finally, we’re done… [Roberts] comes up to me and says, ‘That’s one of the most fantastically bratty things I’ve ever seen in my life,'” Pinchot recalled. That’s why he says, to this day, “I won’t hear anything except praise for her because that was amazing. It was witty. It was incisive. It was bratty, and it was also humane.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Pinchot recently reprised his role as the quirky gallerist–turned–real estate agent Serge in the most recent installment in the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Though the actor shares less than two minutes of screen time with star Eddie Murphy, he says fans are often over the top with their love for the franchise and all its stars.

“People sometimes will even make a death threat,” he said last July. “They’ll say, ‘Do the character for my girlfriend,’ and you say, ‘I think I’ll just have my fruit salad, thank you.’ And then they say, ‘I’ll have to kill you now.’ I mean, that’s a real thing.”