Tom Arnold says Steven Seagal thinks someone is paying him to badmouth the action star: 'F--- him'

Tom Arnold says he's told one particular story about Steven Seagal so many times the action star is convinced he's being paid to do it.

Arnold was part of a San Diego Comic-Con panel on Sunday about his upcoming show Underdeveloped (the cast and creators of which were granted a waiver to attend amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike), and when another panelist casually brought up Seagal, Arnold jumped at the chance to tell his classic anecdote about his Exit Wounds costar.

Arnold retold the karmic tale about filming the 2001 movie that also starred DMX and Anthony Anderson. The story goes they were shooting on a houseboat in Toronto when director Andrzej Bartkowiak wanted to do a run-through of the scene to make sure the cameras were set up right, but the star refused.

"Steven Seagal goes, 'I don't want to rehearse.' He never wanted to rehearse," Arnold says. "He just sat in his chair the whole time for 45 minutes. He could have it rehearsed it, blocked it, done everything."

He says Seagal then instructed the director to roll the cameras to film the scene in which the actor was supposed to get up and leave through a door on the side of the dock, but "he had argued so long he forgot what door to go out," recalls Arnold, who noticed the star chose the wrong exit.

"He starts heading to that door and I looked at Anthony Anderson and I was like, 'Should I tell him?' He goes, 'No.' And [Seagal] opens the door and he goes, 'Oh, f---' and disappeared in the ocean" where he had to be fished out by four people, according to Arnold.

Arnold says the lesson of the story, which he's told in interviews and to costars over the years, is not to be a jerk. But there's one person who apparently thinks Arnold is the one being the jerk.

In an interview with EW after the panel, Arnold shares that Seagal, who now lives in Russia and holds Russian and Serbian citizenship, is fully aware the comedian has been telling the story and doesn't seem pleased.

"A mutual friend we have said, 'Hey, I talked to Steven and I'm gonna set up a [meeting]. And I go 'No, don't do that.' He goes, 'Well, he wants to know who's paying you to badmouth him,'" the actor tells EW,

"I go, 'Nobody is paying,'" he continues. "If he had a sense of humor at all, he'd know that everybody I do movies with, I do a story — Arnold [Schwarzenegger], people I love, all these different people. You don't have to pay me to tell stories. The problem with him is he's got so many."

But Arnold doesn't seem too upset that Seagal sees the story as badmouthing him.

"I also know women that he's done things to that are friends, that are in the business," Arnold alleges. (Seagal has been previously accused of sexual harassment by Jenny McCarthy, who starred in The Stupids with Arnold. Portia de Rossi made similar claims, while Julianna Margulies, Katherine Heigl, and Inside Edition correspondent Lisa Guerrero have also spoken out about alleged encounters with the star.)

"I'm like, 'Okay, well, f--- him. Really f--- him,'" he says, noting he now sees the behavior as more than just being an "asshole on the set."

Arnold can next be seen in Underdeveloped, a mockumentary about a group of failed and inexperienced producers working together at a Hollywood production company, also starring creator Brian A. Metcalf, Thomas Ian Nicholas (American Pie), Kelly Arjen (Adverse), Mark Pellegrino (Supernatural), David Henrie (Wizards of Waverly Place), David Koechner (Anchorman), Samm Levine (Freaks and Geeks), Shelley Regner (Pitch Perfect), Luke Edwards (Little Big League), Jason Faunt (Power Rangers Time Force), Charlene Amoia (How I Met Your Mother), and Lulu Jovovich.

Even with the waiver to discuss the show itself at Comic-Con, the cast could not — and did not — divulge any information on when or how to watch the series under the rules of the strike, but EW has confirmed with non-SAG-AFTRA sources that Underdeveloped will premiere Sept. 8 on Tubi.

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