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Some of the most iconic roles in cinema could have turned out very differently…
Transcript
00:00 It's well known that the majority of films aren't cast with the director or studio's
00:04 first choices for the roles.
00:05 The sheer number of big-budget movies being made means that most will have to make do
00:09 with the second or third choice instead.
00:12 Most of the time this isn't particularly noticeable, but sometimes when you find out
00:16 who the role was originally intended for, suddenly it just makes so much more sense.
00:21 So I'm Amy from WhatCulture, and here are 10 Movie Roles Obviously Designed For Other
00:26 Actors.
00:27 10.
00:28 Tom Maguire in Jerry Maguire - Tom Hanks In recent years, Cameron Crowe has admitted
00:34 that his first choice to play conflicted sports agent Jerry Maguire would have been Tom Hanks,
00:39 not Tom Cruise.
00:40 In fact, the role was specifically written with Hanks in mind.
00:43 However, at the time - a year before shooting was due to begin - Hanks was focused on developing
00:48 his directorial debut, That Thing You Do, and had to pass.
00:52 The role ended up going to Cruise, who then spent the next nine months developing the
00:55 part with Crowe.
00:56 The result is iconic, and it might be hard now to imagine anyone else playing the role.
01:01 Except for the fact that Maguire's whole feel-good character arc is quintessentially
01:06 1990s Tom Hanks.
01:07 The cynic with a soft heart, the good guy in a rough patch who just needs the right
01:11 inspiration to come out on top.
01:14 Sandwiched between 1993's Sleepless in Seattle and 1998's You've Got Mail, Jerry Maguire
01:19 is exactly the kind of movie that Hanks was making at the time.
01:23 9.
01:24 Ruby Rod in The Fifth Element - Prince
01:27 Remember DJ Ruby Rod in Luke Besson's Gonzo sci-fi?
01:31 High camp, high-pitched voice, dressed like he was, well, high?
01:35 The part was written specifically for the late Prince.
01:38 Costumes and props had been designed with him in mind, even down to the mole on Rod's
01:42 cheek.
01:43 Of course, Rod was actually played by comedian Chris Tucker.
01:45 The official version of the story is that Prince's touring schedule prevented him from
01:49 shooting the movie.
01:50 But costumer Jean-Paul Gouthier has a different perspective.
01:53 During the singer's Paris tour dates, Besson got Gouthier to go and meet Prince and show
01:57 him some sketches.
01:58 Of the experience, Gouthier said, quote, "In broken English and with my strong French accent,
02:03 I tried my best to make conversation.
02:06 I showed him my drawings, but he didn't say a word.
02:09 I had had a really funny idea for a costume with netting, through which quite long body
02:13 hair would pass through, and I had done the front and back versions of it.
02:16 So I explained this to Prince.
02:18 And viewers, I apologise, I'm about to do a really bad French accent, but trust me,
02:22 it has a point, it's going somewhere.
02:24 So I explained to Prince, 'It is fake hair, you know?
02:28 The back is made of that, the back, the focale, a very big focale.'
02:34 End quote.
02:35 And yes, I promise that was a quote.
02:37 He explained that Prince gave him an odd look and then left without a word.
02:40 And Gouthier later found out from Besson that Prince had pulled out of the movie, stating
02:44 that the costumes were a bit too effeminate, and that he wasn't best pleased with Gouthier's
02:49 lack of respect.
02:50 And here's where the bad accent comes in.
02:52 It turns out that where Gouthier had been saying 'focale', meaning 'fake ass',
02:56 Prince had instead heard the words 'fuck you'.
02:59 So yeah, you can't really blame a guy too much for pulling out of a movie where his
03:02 first meeting with the costume designer, he thought he was repeatedly being told to go
03:06 fuck himself.
03:07 8.
03:08 Dolores Wilson in Sister Act - Bette Midler
03:12 When screenwriter Paul Rudnick pitched the movie that would later become Sister Act to
03:16 producer Scott Rudin, it was with veteran actor and Broadway singer Bette Midler in
03:20 mind.
03:21 Midler, however, passed on the film, convinced for some reason that her fans wouldn't want
03:25 to see her play a nun.
03:26 It made no sense.
03:28 Dolores wasn't a nun, she was a brassy lounge singer forced to masquerade as one.
03:33 Sister Mary Clarence is only Sister Mary Clarence while she's in witness protection, and she
03:37 uses her showbiz instincts to transform the fortunes of the convent's choir.
03:41 The part wasn't just written for Midler, it was made for her.
03:45 Well, we all know how it goes from there.
03:46 Eventually, the film went to Whoopi Goldberg, and it also went through so many writers and
03:51 so many drafts that Rudnick requested he be credited with a pseudonym as it no longer
03:55 resembled the movie he pitched.
03:57 You know what survived the rewrites though?
03:59 Dolores Wilson, aka Sister Mary Clarence.
04:02 And that movie was a huge hit.
04:04 I for one am glad Whoopi Goldberg got the part.
04:07 7.
04:08 Bruce Willis in What Just Happened - Alec Baldwin
04:11 That's right, the role where Bruce Willis, somewhat famously plays a douchebag version
04:16 of himself, wasn't actually written for Bruce Willis at all.
04:20 Writer Art Linson and director Barry Levinson's Hollywood satire follows Robert De Niro's
04:24 stressed-out film producer Ben from set to boardroom to set, amongst many other memorable
04:30 moments.
04:31 It features a subplot in which Bruce Willis turns up to shoot Ben's movie with an impressively
04:35 luxurious beard which he refuses to shave off, despite it being completely inappropriate
04:40 for the part.
04:41 But that part was originally intended for Alec Baldwin, because it was actually based
04:45 on Alec Baldwin himself.
04:46 You see, What Just Happened is a fictionalised retelling of the stories from Linson's own
04:50 memoir of the same name.
04:52 In his book, Linson recounts Baldwin turning up to a shoot in 1997 with an impressively
04:57 luxurious beard which he refused to shave off.
05:00 Baldwin's character was a fashion photographer whose plane crashes in the wilderness.
05:03 His having the beard at the end of the movie made sense, but having it from the beginning
05:07 made no sense whatsoever.
05:09 Baldwin didn't quite see this though.
05:10 In the end, Baldwin had to be threatened with being fired from the movie and sued by the
05:14 studio before he actually agreed to shave it off.
05:17 De Niro, who was also a producer on the film, had originally approached Baldwin to play
05:21 himself, thinking his famously prickly friend might have developed a bit of a sense of humour
05:25 about the whole thing.
05:26 Judging by the fact that Willis was cast in his place, I think we can all confidently
05:30 say, no such sense of humour had been developed.
05:33 6.
05:34 Russell Hammond in Almost Famous - Brad Pitt
05:39 Director-director Cameron Crowe wrote the script for Almost Famous with Brad Pitt in
05:42 mind for the pivotal role of Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond.
05:46 Not only that, but he also managed to secure Pitt for the role, working with him for over
05:50 four months in developing the character.
05:52 However, Pitt pulled out of the film before shooting could begin, and Crowe rather frankly
05:56 admits that he cried when he found out, worrying how it might look for his career.
06:00 Billy Crudup was cast in his place and did a fantastic job in a career-making role.
06:05 There's even an argument to be made that Pitt, an established movie star by that point
06:09 with a ridiculous level of cool, wouldn't have been able to deliver the vulnerability
06:12 or the callousness that Hammond exhibits.
06:15 Nonetheless, there are multiple references in the finished film to Hammond being too
06:19 good-looking and a golden god, and these lines were very clearly intended to be delivered
06:23 by the blond, god-like-looking Pitt.
06:26 5.
06:27 Peter Weyland in Prometheus - Max von Sydow
06:31 Ridley Scott's long-awaited return to the Alien franchise began life purely as a backstory
06:36 to his original film.
06:37 The initial thoughts on what this film should look like were very different from how it
06:41 actually turned out, and at one point it was going to quite heavily involve an elderly
06:45 Peter Weyland, the founder of the Weyland Corporation.
06:48 He was meant to be a man of advancing years, seeking to use his vast fortune to stave off
06:53 death.
06:54 Originally, Scott had legendary actor Max von Sydow in mind to play Weyland.
06:58 He was 86 at the time, which is age-appropriate for the role.
07:01 However, a subsequent draft of the script called for a younger version of Weyland to
07:05 appear.
07:06 To find the alternatives, it was decided to go with the equally formidable but considerably
07:09 younger Guy Pearce, who could appear au naturel in the flashback part of the story and then
07:14 be aged up with makeup for his other appearances.
07:17 Pearce was cast, and the production proceeded, and then a further draft of the script cut
07:21 the flashback sequence entirely, leaving Scott with the prospect of Pearce playing a character
07:25 twice his own age for no good reason.
07:28 With an actor of Pearce's calibre, it's not the worst thing in the world, but the
07:31 old-age prosthetics the team used sort of did make him look like a mummy at times.
07:36 Moral of the story?
07:37 Maybe they should have stuck with Max.
07:39 4.
07:40 Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part 3 - Winona Ryder
07:45 The Godfather Part 3 is over 30 years old now, and a lot of critical narratives have
07:49 grown up around this movie.
07:50 You know them by heart.
07:52 It was too rushed, there wasn't a story, Francis Ford Coppola did it purely for the
07:56 money, it didn't live up to the quality, blah blah blah.
07:59 One thing almost everyone agrees on, though, is that Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter,
08:04 was a disastrous choice to play pivotal plot point Mary Corleone, the daughter of the trilogy's
08:09 protagonist.
08:10 The critics savaged her performance in a way that almost felt too personal.
08:14 She was called vacant and wooden, they said she didn't know how to perform on camera,
08:18 and that her line delivery was childish.
08:19 Of course, the fact is that Coppola hadn't intended to cast Sofia, he hadn't even intended
08:24 to make the film until he was made an offer he couldn't refuse.
08:27 With only 20 months to go from a blank page to a premiere, Coppola drew the best possible
08:32 cast and crew around him.
08:33 No one could say no to The Godfather, and that included Winona Ryder, who was perfectly
08:38 cast as Mary Corleone.
08:39 That is, until, having filmed three movies back to back, she pulled out due to nervous
08:44 exhaustion a day before she was due to begin filming.
08:47 Coppola didn't have anyone else except Sofia he could bring in to play Mary at such short
08:51 notice, and he couldn't just rework the schedule, he was already pushed for time.
08:55 That in turn led to one of the most notorious miscast roles in Hollywood history, and it's
09:00 one that he's regretted for about 30 years.
09:03 3.
09:04 Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park - Harrison Ford
09:08 From the late 80s to the mid 90s, Harrison Ford was the biggest leading man in Hollywood.
09:13 If a script had a male lead role over 45 years old, then they took Ford first, because if
09:17 he said yes, their project would get an immediate greenlight.
09:20 Of course, even a workaholic can't be in everything, and Ford has never been a workaholic,
09:25 so he almost always said no.
09:27 And that's exactly what happened with the role of Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's
09:31 Jurassic Park, a role which was not so much written for him as modelled on the character
09:36 that had made him a star.
09:37 No, not so much Han Solo, though there could be elements of that, I guess.
09:40 We're talking about Indiana Jones.
09:42 If you check out the painted concept art that Spielberg had knocked up at the pre-production
09:46 stage, the guy running away from the T-Rex with the two kids is the spitting image of
09:50 Ford's rugged archaeologist.
09:52 And that is not a coincidence.
09:54 In retrospect, you can kind of see why he turned it down.
09:57 Grant is a rough-and-ready prehistory geek, a paleontologist with a gung-ho attitude and
10:02 a cool hat who spends half the movie running away from elaborate special effects.
10:06 It's basically everything he spent half of the 80s doing, and you can't blame a man for
10:10 not getting too excited at the prospect of doing it all over again.
10:13 2.
10:14 Bloodsport in The Suicide Squad - Will Smith
10:18 During interviews in the run-up to The Suicide Squad's release, both James Gunn and star
10:22 Idris Elba were keen to dismiss rumours that he'd been hired to replace Will Smith's deadshot.
10:27 Since it was a while before Elba's casting was attached to a specific character, the
10:30 initial assumption was that the part of the hitman Floyd Lawton had been recast.
10:35 Warner Bros were very keen to publicise that this wasn't the case, no doubt to ensure that
10:39 Smith - arguably the biggest star - remained on the radar to return to the role in a potential
10:43 threequel.
10:44 After a bunch of rumours about different characters being introduced, it turned out that Elba
10:48 was playing Gunn's version of DC's Bloodsport, aka Robert Dubois.
10:52 The thing is, Elba's Dubois is Smith's Lawton.
10:55 They're both bad-tempered gunmen and reluctant team leaders with a sinister metallic full-face
11:00 mask.
11:01 And, like Deadshot, Bloodsport even has a daughter who is, like Deadshot, the only good
11:05 thing in his life - an addition to his character that only exists in Gunn's movie.
11:09 Then let's look at the timeline.
11:11 Smith announced that he wouldn't be returning at the end of February 2019.
11:15 Gunn's shooting schedule was set in stone, and Smith was already booked.
11:18 Elba was announced to be in talks to join the cast a week later, and by this time, Gunn
11:22 had already written several drafts of a script that Warner Bros were reportedly high on.
11:27 It seems obvious that those drafts included Deadshot - Peter Safran has all but admitted
11:30 this in an interview last July.
11:32 What it looks like from the outside is that they were going to recast Smith with Elba,
11:36 but then panicked over losing their relationship with Smith, forcing Gunn to think on the fly
11:40 and bring in a new character.
11:42 However, given the huge similarities between the characters, it was less of a last-minute
11:46 rewrite and more of a find-and-replace job.
11:50 1.
11:51 Everyone in Blow Dry
11:53 Blow Dry is a case study in the horrors of studio micromanagement.
11:57 There may be no other film in history where the entire cast were all clearly intended
12:01 to be practically anyone other than who they were.
12:04 It's fair to say that 20 years ago, Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Bofoy didn't have the
12:08 Hollywood clout that he probably enjoys today.
12:11 Bofoy's first feature was The Full Monty, an unexpectedly massive comedy about laid-off
12:15 Sheffield steelworkers who form a male stripper troupe.
12:18 The film featured a cast of virtual unknowns, most of whom came from the north of England.
12:22 But when he attempted to duplicate the trick with his script for Never Better, this time
12:26 being about rival hair stylists in Yorkshire, Bofoy found his film placed with Miramax and
12:31 the infamous Harvey Weinstein.
12:33 Suddenly there were lists of Hollywood-famous actors flying around, mostly over his head.
12:38 Even the director had little control over who was cast, which is how a movie supposedly
12:42 about the authentic lives of working-class northerners ended up with pretty much no cast
12:46 members from the north.
12:47 I mean, there was Londoners, there was Australians, there was Americans, and all of them absolutely
12:52 murdered the Yorkshire accent.
12:54 The result was, to put it mildly, horrible.
12:57 Unable to fix it, Bofoy bowed out to make room for another writer, but since the whole
13:01 point was to play up the connection with The Full Monty, he wasn't even allowed to remove
13:04 his name from the film.
13:06 Instead, in a towering moment of English passive aggression, he asked for his credit to read
13:11 based on the screenplay Never Better by Simon Bofoy.
13:14 Probably would have been even better if he had managed to get them to preface it with
13:17 "very loosely".
13:19 And on that note, we've reached the end of this list of 10 movie roles obviously designed
13:23 for other actors.
13:24 If you've got any more in mind, then let us know in the comments down below.
13:27 And remember to check out WhatCulture.com for more lists and articles like this every
13:31 single day.
13:32 As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture, and I'll catch you next time.