It's become Quentin Tarantino's most commercially successful film (a whopping $413m worldwide so far) and it won Oscars for both Tarantino and Christoph Waltz but back in 2011, Will Smith turned down the lead role in Django Unchained.
While he'd previously put it down to a scheduling conflict with Men In Black 3, Smith has now revealed to Entertainment Weekly that it was actually a key problem with Tarantino's Oscar-winning script.
“Django wasn’t the lead," Smith explained. "So it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead!” The other character being, of course, Christoph Waltz's bounty hunter who eventually picked up an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor while Jamie Foxx was campaigned for lead. He ultimately failed to get a nomination.
Smith was Tarantino's first choice for the role and apparently he pleaded with him to change the script - SPOILER WARNING. “I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!’” Smith recalls.
In the end though, he was a fan of the film. “I thought it was brilliant,” he told EW. “Just not for me.”
Smith will next be seen in After Earth, alongside his son Jaden.
[via Entertainment Weekly]
(Image: All Star)
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