Will Smith: I Turned Down Django Unchained Because I “Wasn’t The Lead”
Truth rating: 10
11:35 am, March 25th, 2013
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Will Smith says he turned down the title role in the Oscar-nominated Django Unchained because it “wasn’t the lead.”
Director Quentin Tarantino originally had his sights set on Smith to play Django, a slave who enacts revenge while trying to rescue his wife.
But the actor says he passed on the part because Christoph Waltz’s bounty hunter was the true main role (even though Waltz went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor).
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“Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead,” Smith tells Entertaiment Weekly. “The other character was the lead!”
He goes on to reveal, “I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!’”
After Smith bowed out, the part eventually went to Jamie Foxx, but there’s no hard feelings.
“I thought [the movie] was brilliant. Just not for me,” he tells the mag.
Would you have liked to see Smith in Django Unchained?
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