Shia LaBeouf has certainly made his presence known since he arrived in New Orleans just before Mardi Gras, thanks to his now infamous fight at R Bar, near-daily jogs through the city and willingness to snap photos with fans wherever he goes. But until Saturday, it wasn’t exactly clear to the masses what brought the Los Angeles native so far down South.
In an interview with Channel 5 host and Loyola University grad Andrew Callaghan, LaBeouf said it was heartbreak, family and a desire to explore his Cajun roots that called him to the Crescent City.
“I came out here heartbroken,” LeBeouf told Callaghan. “I speak to you now as a man who’s filling my heart up.”
The interview with Callaghan, a YouTube personality who first gained notoriety online for his man on the street interviews in the French Quarter, marked LaBeouf’s first substantive public comments on his most recent arrest and move to New Orleans. Callaghan said the hour-long conversation was recorded a week after Fat Tuesday and it was posted to YouTube in full on Saturday.
Seated on an orange couch and surrounded by artwork in his Uptown home, LaBeouf said his split from actress Mia Goth coincided with his father’s evacuation from California following the wildfires that destroyed huge swaths of Los Angeles. LaBeouf said smoke and pollution generated by the fires aggravated his father’s respiratory issues, which he said stem from exposure to toxins during the Vietnam War.
In this photo provided by entertainer Jeffrey Damnit, actor Shia LaBeouf is taken into police custody in New Orleans on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026, after allegedly hitting multiple people outside a bar. (Jeffrey Damnit via AP)
With family in Opelousas, Abbeville, Covington and Mandeville, a move to Louisiana seemed the obvious choice, LaBeouf said. He told Callaghan he’d been in the city for less than two weeks at the time the interview was recorded.
“So I moved out here and started trying to rebuild and was having a good time and then, you know, hit a roadblock right there,” LaBeouf said, referring to his recent arrest on three simple battery charges.
LaBeouf’s viral confrontation
LaBeouf was catapulted into the national spotlight on Feb. 17 when he was accused of starting a fight outside R Bar. Video footage shows a shirtless LaBeouf shoving one person to the ground and punching another in the face before pushing a third.
New Orleans Police Department officers said in an arrest report that LaBeouf repeatedly shouted a homophobic slur during the fight and his arrest, at one point shouting, “These f****ts put me in jail. I’m a Catholic.” He was booked into jail on two battery counts.
Though the actor was initially released on his own recognizance, New Orleans Criminal District Court Judge Simone Levine last week raised his bond to $100,000, had him drug tested and ordered him to attend rehab. He was booked on a third battery count in the same case on Saturday.
LaBeouf apologized for starting the fight in his interview with Callaghan, describing his behavior as “disgusting” and saying he would answer for it in court. Still, he suggested that it was gay men encroaching on his personal space that ultimately set him off on Fat Tuesday.
LaBeouf said much of his immediate family history was shaped by his paternal grandmother, a gay woman who fled Louisiana for Los Angeles to escape the scorn of her Catholic family. She changed the spelling of her last name from LeBoeuf, like that of many early Louisiana settlers, to LaBeouf, and befriended beat poet Allen Ginsberg, LaBeouf told Callaghan.
The family tree
Now LaBeouf, the actor famous for movies like “Holes” and “Transformers,” is on almost the opposite path, leaving the West Coast for Louisiana on a mission to get in touch with his long-lost relatives while in what he described as “a full-blown love affair with Jesus.” Though he said he grew up largely agnostic and had a Bar Mitzvah as a kid, LaBeouf said he gravitated to Catholicism as an adult.
LaBeouf said his Mardi Gras experience was — aside from the fight — an expression of his faith, filled largely with joyful encounters with fans and daily celebrations.
“If you’re in the position I’m in as a Cajun man who has been exiled from his family, who has blood in the soil, who is fully connected to this place and have never really explored it, who’s been on a f***ing leash for a long time, who is a wild man at heart, you wind up at Mardi Gras, it becomes a spiritual experience,” LaBeouf told Callaghan. “Bro, it’s sacred. It’s sacred.”
A new film
Despite the national attention, LaBeouf said he doesn’t plan on leaving New Orleans anytime soon, hinting that he already has work in the area in the form of an upcoming film about the Angola Prison Rodeo. Though he didn’t share many specifics, LaBeouf said his much-documented jogs are part of an effort to stay fit for bull riding.
But more than anything, LaBeouf said he feels at home in the Crescent City.
“I like it here, I really do,” he said. “I love it here.”
