Sometimes you need to let things go. Even when you realize you probably made a horrible mistake and your mind is full of regret, you have to keep looking forward. Looking to the past only leads to making up excuses for why you screwed up so badly, unless you’re willing to be perfectly honest about the reasons for your choices.
Will Smith is not, which is why he keeps getting himself into a pickle of unbelievability when it comes to why he opted to not take the offered lead in Quentin Tarantino‘s DJANGO UNCHAINED.
Let me refresh your memory – Will Smith was Tarantino’s #1 choice to play Django, and conversations were had between them about the role. But it never came to pass with Smith passing, and Jamie Foxx eventually stepping in, helping make DJANGO UNCHAINED the highest-grossing Tarantino film to this point.
It was definitely a role many were intrigued to see Smith take on, given his penchant for playing it a bit safe with the movies he chooses to get involved with. So we all wondered what about Tarantino’s film didn’t strike the right chord with Big Willie Style.
Two years ago, we got his answer.
Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. (Christoph Waltz) was the lead… I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!’
Waltz would win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for that performance as “the lead,” so Tarantino looks pretty good for not changing the dynamic of those two characters in his picture. But apparently, as Smith has thought about this more, looking back on a movie he understands he probably should have taken, his mindset on why he didn’t has shifted a bit. And now we have yet another excuse from the actor as to why DJANGO UNCHAINED wasn’t right for him.
It was about the creative direction of the story. To me, it’s as perfect a story as you could ever want: a guy that learns how to kill to retrieve his wife that has been taken as a slave. That idea is perfect. And it was just that Quentin and I couldn’t see [eye to eye].
I wanted to make that movie so badly, but I felt the only way was, it had to be a love story, not a vengeance story.
We can’t look at what happens in Paris [the terrorist attacks] and want to f— somebody up for that. Violence begets violence. I just couldn’t connect to violence being the answer. Love had to be the answer.
Let me get this straight… It was perfect, but I wanted to change it, and love somehow needed to conquer all in a tale of a slave saving his wife and taking action against his masters? Ummm… Yeah. Okay.
Now it’s your turn. What’s the real reason Will Smith backed away from the chance to star in DJANGO UNCHAINED?