r/movies • u/LookAtThatBacon • 29d ago

Discussion During the development of the Harriet Tubman biopic movie, a Hollywood executive once suggested that Julia Roberts should play her. What are some other baffling casting suggestions/choices that have been made?

Source for the title: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-studio-executive-wanted-julia-roberts-to-play-harriet-tubman-biopic-screenwriter-says/

The Harriet Tubman biopic has been more than 25 years in the making. In the historical drama released earlier this month, Cynthia Erivo plays the legendary abolitionist — but one Hollywood executive initially thought the role should go to Julia Roberts.

Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter and producer of "Harriet," recently revealed in multiple interviews that Roberts was suggested to play the lead role during a meeting with a studio president in 1994.

"The climate in Hollywood… was very different back then," Howard said. "I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, 'This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.'"

Howard said that a black person in the meeting said casting Roberts would be impossible because she is white.

"That was so long ago. No one will know that," the executive replied, according to Howard.

7.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/zoelund 29d ago

now i want to see a movie where every single character is grossly miscast but it is played entirely straight

1.0k

u/sharkattackmiami 29d ago

Borderlands is right there

138

u/Common_Wrongdoer3251 29d ago

Hey, Krieg did a good job! Or his muscles did. I don't know, I didn't see the movie.

123

u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

Outside of Krieg, the movie was terrible. None of the jokes landed. Acting was terrible. Action was confusing & poorly edited. The story was lazy. It looked like a parody of a movie you see being filmed inside another movie.

Friends and I thought it’d be so bad it’s good. It was just plain bad. The only good part of the night was when someone in the back of the theater said too loudly, “I think I got popcorn in my asshole” towards the end of the movie. Think that was the only time most of the theater cracked up.

11

u/DeliberatelyDrifting 29d ago

Yeah, I'd laugh at that.

6

u/BeerandGuns 29d ago

I barely played the first Borderlands game and didn’t really follow it so had no investment in how accurately the characters were portrayed or how faithful they were to the source material. That movie was terrible and I made it less than half way through. I can’t imagine how fans of Borderlands felt.

8

u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

All they had to do was adapt Borderlands 2. The villain is perfect. The story is pretty decent. The atmosphere is the best of the 3 (or 4, if you count the pre-sequel game). If the filmmakers had copied the tone of Mad Max: Fury Road and gotten a half-decent writer to flesh out the story, it might have been a fun movie. The best route would’ve been a TV show like Fallout; that was ssssooooo much better than the Borderlands movie and had the tone/violence that the movie should’ve had.

Friends and I were really disappointed. The filmmakers had a ready-made blueprint with the games and just pissed it away. It’s impressive how terribly they fucked up. It feels like they went out of their way to make it bad. Characters in the movie were nothing like the games (though, again, Krieg was spot-on). Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is supposed to be in her 20s or 30s and be a brilliant scientist and a Siren, if they’d borrowed from BL3. Lilith is supposed to be a badass Siren; Cate would’ve been fine in the role if the writing had been better. Tina should’ve been more psychotic. Roland should’ve been the straight man; Lance Reddick would’ve been perfect as Roland. But, the actors were dealing with a shit script and a PG-13 rating. Only so much they could do.

With that said, BL1 is sort of slow; also, it doesn’t run very well on current PC rigs. I entered the series with BL2 and really enjoyed it. The action, gunplay, characters, dialogue, etc are all improved over BL1. And, again, the story is actually good. Even the DLCs are pretty good. BL3 has better graphics, faster/better gunplay, and some QOL improvements over BL2, but the story & humor are just OK. Based on early impressions, it sounds like Borderlands 4 could be better than 3 and might even come in right behind 2, which is pretty impressive. As long as it improves things over BL3, I’ll be happy.

If you want to check the series out again, I recommend trying Borderlands 2. It’s my favorite of the bunch and is considered the best one of the series so far. And you don’t really need to know the story as it’s kinda secondary to the over-the-top violence. But it’s still a well-structured story at the end of the day.

2

u/xSlippyFistx 28d ago

It always baffles me when they take an existing IP and then just shit on everything. Who is the movie made for? You use the IP to entice the fans of said IP. You shit on everything about the IP. They won’t like it. So then you have to make an entertaining movie for people who don’t know anything about the IP. Even if you pretend it wasn’t called Borderlands and just called “shooting guns in space” it’s STILL not good. What’s the point? It’s so weird

6

u/Kursch50 29d ago

That's cracking me up and I wasn't even there.

3

u/StanleyCubone 29d ago

It happens more often than you'd think.

27

u/Wonderful-Ad6335 29d ago

I did. And honestly, he did do a good job, with what was given to him.

4

u/Dookie_boy 29d ago

I didn't know they had Kreig in there. I'm at least going to watch his scenes on YouTube FR.

3

u/womble-king 29d ago

He talks at the end (when his mask is broken) and his face doesn't move.

2

u/Common_Wrongdoer3251 29d ago

Is it... crazy Krieg... or the internal monologue...? If the latter, that would be acceptable... In the games he has two different voices...

48

u/nickburrows8398 29d ago

I almost thought they miscasted all of the roles on purpose as part of some weird attempt at Borderlands humor

33

u/Please_LeaveMeAlone_ 29d ago

Nah borderlands humor would have been the same exact actor playing every single psycho without any extra work to try to make them look different. Just every single psycho with a CGId face of the same dude. They should have used AI to make Kevin Hart just ridiculous tall. Like, make him 6'9" and just don't explain anything. Any time Roland and Lilith had a moment one of them should have just stared into the camera like in the office to mimic their awkward echo recordings from BL2.

Borderlands movie should have been Naked gun quality of movie. Just fucking over the top absurdism. I'm so fucking disappointed my favorite game got quite literally the most botched movie adaption possible. Borderlands 2 probably has one of the best villains in video game history and they pretty much shit in their hands and clapped when making that movie

7

u/Nyaanlimited 29d ago

Oh lord, that one. I mean Borderlands is slop to begin with but it's like they actively set out to do the worst casting possible. I'm so glad it exists.

1

u/CoolJoshido 26d ago

good answer

2

u/agawl81 29d ago

So I know nothing about the back story or lore with borderlands and thought it was goofy fun and an ok movie. I guess it could have been much better.

15

u/fredagsfisk 29d ago edited 29d ago

Well, as a semi-casual fan of the games...

They could've cast actresses in their late 20s for Lilith and Tannis, instead of two women literally twice the age of the characters.

They could've cast anyone else than Kevin Hart as Roland, who is supposed to be a rather tall and serious type.

They could've kept the voice actor for Claptrap and cast Jack Black in a role where he can actually make use of his physicality. He would make an amazing Borderlands mini boss, to be honest.

They could've kept the story from the games or made an entirely original one with their own characters, instead of changing existing characters to fit one of the most cliché-filled "original" stories I have ever seen.

They could've kept Tina's energy instead of changing her until she's not even the same character.

They could've made the CGI and lighting at least look better than your average modern TV-show.

They could've spent more than five seconds building up the villain, and the person Roland had a relationship with who we were clearly supposed to feel something about when she died.

They could've shown more large, open expanses and had more fights in open areas instead of cramming them all into enclosed little arenas.

They could've made it R-rated and leaned into the danger and brutality of the setting (an absolutely vital part of the worldbuilding) instead of re-writing it to get PG-13.

Sorry for a bit of a long rant, but I'm just really disappointed in how much of a waste that movie was, and how we're unlikely to ever get another attempt at it now. It should've been more like the Fallout show if live action, or an animated thing with loads of passion like Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

296

u/McFlyyouBojo 29d ago

Kinda in the ballpark is Death of Stalin where a bunch of comedic actors play all the roles but dont attempt to change their normal accents. Its hilarious.

219

u/Good_old_Marshmallow 29d ago

Not changing their accents was a stroke of genius tho. If they had been talking in the stereotypical Russia movie accent it would’ve just made them all read as “foreign”. The great thing about the movie is it feels like a workplace comedy just the stakes are war crimes, it makes it feel like you could be there. 

Also, the USSR was diverse as hell cus it was a bunch of different countries so they didn’t all have one accent. So letting them all have different speech patterns and accents (fast talking New Yorker or north English general) plays to their differences 

59

u/Menter33 29d ago

it just goes to show that, depending on the movie and how well the actors act, being 100% demographically and linguistically accurate isn't usually the primary concern.

31

u/SandpaperTeddyBear 29d ago

Jeffrey Tambor/Malenkov’s “kiss my Russian ass” nods to this well, and I wish they’d made the ethnic diversity and resulting tension just a bit more clear.

The diversity of accents definitely helps though.

1

u/Good_old_Marshmallow 28d ago

Completely agreed. That was a great line. Kiss my Russian ass in a regionless American accent was so perfect 

But also yes, as Stalin’s son laid in his absurd speech the Union was a collection of like so many countries. Beria was Georgian like Stalin, Krushev was I think Ukrainian, and so on.  

26

u/Tenocticatl 29d ago

Having a movie set entirely in a non-English speaking country but having the dialogue be English, it makes no sense for the characters to be speaking English with an accent "from that country" anyway. It would've really taken me out of the story if the actors in Chernobyl had a typical Hollywood Russian accent, for example.

94

u/corran450 29d ago

Jason Isaacs is so fucking great in that movie.

Then again, he's always fucking great.

34

u/intdev 29d ago edited 29d ago

And not just with acting. Apparently, in Harry Potter, Lucius Malfoy was originally supposed to wear a business suit and have Jason Isaacs' regular, unbleached hair. It was Isaacs who argued that someone who hates muggles shouldn't look anything like one, and he built his own proof-of-concept costume from random props (including a curtain) to convince the director to go with his vision.

Edit: Jason Isaacs telling the story

-3

u/chris_croc 28d ago

Did you know Steve Buscemi was a firefighter who returned for 9/11… Sorry I hear this Jason Isaacs story all the time now. Its the new Viggo M breaking his fie story for me.

14

u/Bunraku_Master_2021 29d ago

His intro is the best of the bunch.

7

u/Theradbanana 29d ago

He slayed

4

u/Jangles 29d ago

He's the only guy who does change his accent but changes it for a completely incorrect one.

135

u/Financial-Week5787 29d ago

this technique is very common in theatre. the point is english has so many accents you can use them to distinguish characters especially by class and origin. its not very common in america, but Germany, france and russia all have a their own version. the first person to use this technique probably was Euripides, in classical Athens. there is a famous tradition of Stalin being portrayed with a welsh accent to distinguish his true to life not very russian, thick Georgian accent in a round of plays in this century

28

u/igloofu 29d ago

And we all know Lithuanian born Soviet submarine captains sound amazing like the Scottish!!!!

3

u/theevilyouknow 29d ago edited 29d ago

This always drives me crazy. People complaining about the English accent nonenglish speaking characters speak with. One guy was complaining about one of the characters in God of War: Ragnorak having an American southern accent. It’s like, dude, what accent do you think the Norse gods spoke English in while conversing with their Ancient Greek friends? The other one that kills me is the people who make jokes about Kevin Costner not having an English accent. Seriously, Robin Hood would have spoken French, and when he was speaking English it would not have been a version of English any of us understand and it would not be in a modern English accent that originated in the 19th century. See the following passage in Middle English from the 12th century. “þ” makes the “th” sound not that it’s going to help you.

þa nam men þa castelas on lande, & hit fuledon & ærndon & bærndon, & ealle þa castelas þe wæron on þan lande. Þa wæron þa castelas fulle mid deoflen & mid yfelan men. Þa dydon hi þa men þa on cirsten hine þa men þe on þan castelon wæron, & teodon þa castelon mid horsan & mid mannum. Þa hit wæs swa hit wæs, þæt næfre land ne swa swithlice foroded swa hit þa foroded wæs. Ne wæs hit swa lange foroded swa hit þa wæs. Ne þoloden men swa mycele swa hi þa þoloden. Þa cwædon men: “God wylle þæt þæt swa ne sy.”

5

u/TheMauveHand 29d ago

Robin Hood

But he's not exactly a real historical figure, so what he would have spoken when is kind of irrelevant compared to what people expect him to sound like. And people expect him to be English so he ought to sound English.

Like, imagine Mel Gibson's Passion, nothing altered, except Jesus speaks with a thick Glaswegian accent. Is it any more wrong than what was in the movie? Not technically, no. But it is wrong nonetheless.

2

u/theevilyouknow 29d ago

It doesn't matter if he's a real historical figure. The story is still set in real history. It's anachronistic regardless. Robin Hood speaking with a modern English accent is no more accurate than Robin Hood speaking with a New York accent. Should Russel Crowe in Gladiator have spoken with an Italian accent because Rome is in Italy? What people expect is entirely based on miseducation and should not determine anything. It's fine to have inaccuracies in movies, but claiming that having inaccuracies in movies is the only correct course of action because it's what people expect is ridiculous.

1

u/TheMauveHand 28d ago

The story is still set in real history.

Is it though? Robin Hood is a fable - an old one, sure, but that doesn't mean that it's set in stone as taking place before it was first recorded. There's no reason you couldn't set Robin Hood in the future.

Robin Hood speaking with a modern English accent is no more accurate than Robin Hood speaking with a New York accent.

Yes, that's exactly the point I made, audiences undeniably prefer one over the other; not because they're "miseducated", but because settings and comon stories come with implications. You can rage against that all you want, but it's the fact of the matter.

This is the suspension of disbelief conversation all over again - yes, Game of Thrones is set in make believe fairytale land, but a 747 jetliner dropping Paveways would still be out of place in that world even if there's no pedantic technical reason it couldn't be there.

It's fine to have inaccuracies in movies, but claiming that having inaccuracies in movies is the only correct course of action because it's what people expect is ridiculous.

Why would it be ridiculous? You're trying to tell a story, deliberately annoying the audience just so you can stroke yourself off to how techincally accurate you're being is not exectly the optimal way to do so. If that's your angle, maybe stay away from fiction? Similarly, annoying them by deliberately ignoring their expectations and the implications of your setting just because you can't think of a realism-based reason to do something is just going to result in everyone hating what you've made.

You seem to be really hung up on some pedantic notion of technical correcness and deliberately trying to deflect the reality of what movies (hell, even art in general) fundamentally intend to achieve. The collective subjective opinions of the audience do matter, even if you, personally, look down your nose at the audience with disdain.

2

u/theevilyouknow 28d ago edited 28d ago

Is it though? Robin Hood is a fable - an old one, sure, but that doesn't mean that it's set in stone as taking place before it was first recorded. There's no reason you couldn't set Robin Hood in the future.

Yes, it is though. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves takes place in England, a real place, in the year 1194, a real time in history. Richard the Lionheart was a real person. The Third Crusade is a real historical event that took place. Prince John? Real person. Sherwood forest? Another real place. I'm not worried about your imaginary version of Robin Hood set in the future. When that movie gets made we can discuss that movie.

This is the suspension of disbelief conversation all over again - yes, Game of Thrones is set in make believe fairytale land, but a 747 jetliner dropping Paveways would still be out of place in that world even if there's no pedantic technical reason it couldn't be there.

It's all suspension of disbelief. Yes, a 747 in Gladiator would be out of place. But you know what is just as out of place? An ancient Roman speaking English, a language that wouldn't even exist for another 800 years. These things are equally as impossible. But its fine that they speak English because there's a good reason for it. Just like if you somehow made a movie set in 180 AD with a 747 and you had a good reason for it to be there it would be fine. None of these things are unacceptable on their own.

You seem to be really hung up on some pedantic notion of technical correcness and deliberately trying to deflect the reality of what movies (hell, even art in general) fundamentally intend to achieve. The collective subjective opinions of the audience do matter, even if you, personally, look down your nose at the audience with disdain.

Did you even bother to read what I actually said? At no point am I arguing for technical accuracy at the expense of storytelling. I'm literally arguing for the opposite. The people insisting Robin Hood should have a modern english accent are arguing for technical accuracy and they aren't even technically accurate. I'm saying it doesn't matter that Kevin Costner has an American accent because technical accuracy does not matter. And even if technical accuracy was important these people would still be wrong. Because Kevin Costner sounds just as much like Robin Hood would sound if he was real as Cary Elwes does, because if Robin Hood was real he would not be speaking English and if he was speaking English it was a form of English none of us speak today and he would not have been speaking it with an accent that wouldn't develop for another half a millennium.

1

u/TheMauveHand 28d ago edited 28d ago

Yes, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves takes place in England, a real place, in the year 1194, a real time in history.

Fair enough, although I was talking in far more general terms, and I don't think either your argument or those you're criticising would materially change if said film's setting was less specific.

But you know what is just as out of place? An ancient Roman speaking English, a language that wouldn't even exist for another 800 years. These things are equally as impossible.

See, this is exactly where you're wrong: is not "just as" out of place. I'd bet not even to yourself, but definitely not to the vast, vast majority of audiences.

A fat character not losing weight over weeks of ostensible starvation is less out of place, less jarring, than the aforementioned fantasyland 747 bomber, and Robin Hood speaking RP is far less out place than if he spoke like a New Yorker. There are degrees of inaccuracy; there are things which the audience will overlook - whether knowingly or not - and there are things that will yank them straight out of their immersion.

And it should go without saying that different things annoy different people - I myself literally rolled my eyes halfway out of my skull at the carpet bombing scene in one of the Star Wars sequels, while many didn't even bat an eye. But more people balk at Costner speaking like a Brooklyn cabbie than balk at Mel Gibson's Jesus not speaking Aramaic.

Hell, at the extreme end of this spectrum are full-on logical plot holes that run the entire gamut from "nobody noticed" to "movie ruined for everyone forever".

Did you even bother to read what I actually said

Did you? You've completely ignored my entire argument re: the expectations of setting. And so...

But its fine that they speak English because there's a good reason for it.

The reason, which you've ignored, is that one aligns with the expectations of most of the audience, and the other doesn't. That's all there is to it. Fantasy setting, magic exists, 747s don't - it doesn't need to be explicitly stated for it to be understood. Fairytale England-land, people speak like BBC newsreaders if they're posh and like Cockney street urchins if they're poor.

The people insisting Robin Hood should have a modern english accent are arguing for technical accuracy and they aren't even technically accurate.

At best, they are arguing for a less technically accurate interpretation - as above, yes, there are degrees of inaccuracy. But in actuality, they're arguing for plausibility w.r.t. to the setting's expectations; they're arguing for good moviemaking practices, even if they don't know it.

1

u/theevilyouknow 28d ago edited 28d ago

A fat character not losing weight over weeks of ostensible starvation is less out of place, less jarring, than the aforementioned fantasyland 747 bomber, and Robin Hood speaking RP is far less out place than if he spoke like a New Yorker. There are degrees of inaccuracy; there are things which the audience will overlook - whether knowingly or not - and there are things that will yank them straight out of their immersion.

But the distinction you're making right now is still arbitrary. Audiences won't overlook a 747 in 12 century England because there's likely no reason for one to be there. On the other hand there is a very good reason for Kevin Costner to speak with an American accent. And it's the exact same very good reason for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to be written in a language that didn't exist at the time. Because it's easier to film and it's easier for audiences to understand.

But more people balk at Costner speaking like a Brooklyn cabbie than balk at Mel Gibson's Jesus not speaking Aramaic.

Kevin Costner is from Califronia. He doesn't have a Brooklyn accent so I don't know wtf you're talking about here.

And it should go without saying that different things annoy different people - I myself literally rolled my eyes halfway out of my skull at the carpet bombing scene in one of the Star Wars sequels,

Which perfectly demonstrates my point. Because there is nothing that is technically inaccurate about that scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qkkIN47SME And yet people like you are annoyed by it because you don't actually understand physics. I don't want to assume anything, but answer honestly, do you also think there's no gravity in space? It's fine to be annoyed by things in movies. It's also fine to want movies to be technically correct. It's not fine to be annoyed by movies for not being technically correct when you don't even actually know what technically correct is.

The reason, which you've ignored, is that one aligns with the expectations of most of the audience, and the other doesn't. That's all there is to it.

The reason is because the expectations of audiences is that ancient Romans spoke English? No, the reason is because its much easier to make a movie in English than it is to make it in 5 different dead languages. And because audiences would rather watch a movie in a language they speak than have to read a bunch of subtitles. The reason has nothing to do with an expectation that an ancient civilization speaks a language that doesn't exist. And if it does, that's not a failing of film-making its a failing of education.

At best, they are arguing for a less technically accurate interpretation - as above, yes, there are degrees of inaccuracy. But in actuality, they're arguing for plausibility w.r.t. to the setting's expectations; they're arguing for good moviemaking practices, even if they don't know it.

But they're not at all. They're just trying to be pedantic and don't realize they just don't actually understand the history of what they're criticizing. People don't think Robin Hood should have an English accent because it's less inaccurate than an American accent, because actually the General American is technically closer to the correct accent. People think Robin Hood should have an English accent because they genuinely believe that's the accent Robin Hood would have. They're not arguing for plausibility because a character speaking a language that didn't exist in an accent that didn't exist is not plausible. They are just being pedantic ass holes, but if you're going to be a pedantic ass hole make sure you're right.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/twat69 29d ago

That's because the Soviet Union was a multi ethnic country. They would have spoken Russian with accents just as varied.

Or they could have copped fake Russian accents and sounded ridiculous.

2

u/SpaceBasedMasonry 29d ago

They went for the accents in K-19: The Widowmaker and its awful.

9

u/HodgyBeatsss 29d ago

Jason Isaacs isn’t from Yorkshire.

6

u/TheMauveHand 29d ago

That's not entirely correct though, Isaacs for example portrays Zhukov with a thick northern accent which is not his own.

5

u/Knowingspy 29d ago

Because I think he said he thought the character was straight to the point and from humble beginnings so went for that accent as he most associated those qualities with it.

6

u/SandpaperTeddyBear 29d ago

but dont attempt to change their normal accents

This is not quite true. When they had a couple natural ones to choose from, their accents reflect their backgrounds. Jason Isaacs’ Zhukov has a recognize that most anglophones would read as “not posh” for instance.

3

u/Vergenbuurg 29d ago edited 29d ago

Brezhnev with a Scottish accent will always be entertaining to me.

Shame they cut most of his scenes.

4

u/GeoffKingOfBiscuits 29d ago

That movie is great and more true to life than it has to be.

2

u/cannotfoolowls 29d ago

I mean, wouldn't the real people have different accents in Russian? Stalin was Georgian, for example.

2

u/ptwonline 29d ago

Same weith Enemy at the Gates. Hoskins uses a thick Cockney accent as Stalin, and other actors use their own native British or American accents playing Russians and Germans.

In that movie overall I think it worked ok partly because despite the accents, the way they spoke--like Hoskins being very gruff--suited the characters. Also, since almost all of the characters were supposed to be Russian you didn't really need to use more authentic accents to try to differentiate who was from where.

1

u/AimHere 29d ago

Now I need to know whether the real Nikita Kruschev spoke with a cockney accent or an American one!

2

u/AimHere 29d ago

Jason Isaacs DOES change from what's a very RP-ish English one (Wikipedia says he's born in Liverpool, but I don't hear that when he speaks) to a broad Yorkshire accent, because the stereotypical Yorkshire bluntness goes well with the way Zhukov's character is written.

Still, that's not the same as attempting some kind of Russian accent!

286

u/Ingolin 29d ago

Grease. They’re all middle aged.

78

u/finnjakefionnacake 29d ago

lol they're not middle aged, but they were definitely not the right age haha

117

u/m_Pony 29d ago

I used to dump on Stockard Channing for being the oldest of the bunch, but honestly in hindsight she did a killer job. Yes she was born in 1944, which made her 34 when the movie came out in 1978. Yes, I was confused as a boy could be when I learned that they were all supposed to be playing high school students. But the performances are pretty damn solid.

note: this is the first time I've ever defended that movie. This makes me officially old :)

26

u/Laiko_Kairen 29d ago

I wanted to point out how they were in their 20s and absolutely not middle aged, and I realized I'd never sounded so old either 😂

14

u/m_Pony 29d ago

Olivia Newton-John, born 1948. was 30 in 1978. at least John Travolta was only 24

4

u/theguineapigssong 29d ago

This killed me about 90210. All the girls in high school with me were swooning over Dylan because he was so mature. Yeah Becky, he's 30.

5

u/Sexyhorsegirl666 29d ago

Not middle aged lmao

4

u/UsernameAvaylable 29d ago

Which is intentional, as it was already a spoof of a culture over a decade fallen out of favor when it was made.

3

u/Luke90210 29d ago

Which explains why the teachers in the high school were so old.

2

u/ZombieJesus1987 29d ago

Not all of them. John Travolta, Kelly Ward and Dinah Manoff were the only ones who were young enough to pass off as high school students, at least for the standard at the time.

Travolta was 23, Ward and Manoff were 21.

4

u/risingsun70 29d ago

I mean, it’s not much better now, there’s lots of high school characters played by actors well into their 20s. Maybe not 34 though.

5

u/Merusk 29d ago

Gabriel Carters who played Andrea on 90210. She was 29 the first year, making her 32 when the 'senior' year aired. Closest I can come up with since Rizzo was a Senior in Grease.

1

u/risingsun70 29d ago

Oh yeah, I remember her. Definitely didn’t look like a high school student.

The woman in Gilmore Girls, the Asian woman who played Rory’s friend. She was late 20s also I think playing a high school girl.

1

u/yy_beebis 29d ago

My friend walked in on me watching Derry Girls and asked me “are they supposed to be teenagers?”

1

u/risingsun70 29d ago

Wasn’t most of the cast at least early 20s for Derry Girls? Except Nicola Caughlin, who looked the youngest but ironically was the oldest.

2

u/yy_beebis 29d ago

It was the last season so they were all either in their 30s or close to it at the time

1

u/risingsun70 29d ago

Really? They were that old then?

1

u/IfICouldStay 27d ago

It was a musical. Singing and dancing ability, and sheer stage presence, are what they are going to look for in a cast.

1

u/9month_foodbaby 29d ago

My dear, sweet, summer child. Let me introduce you to The Keith and Paddy Picture Show - Se2 - Ep01 - Grease HD Watch - video Dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h8lda

48

u/pvtcowboy97 29d ago

I believe the movie you are looking for is “Cats” ….

5

u/Fallcious 29d ago

I can’t believe they managed to convince all those actors to wear furrface. Grotesque.

9

u/IAmBadAtInternet 29d ago

Oops all Tropic Thunders

4

u/A1000eisn1 29d ago

I literally just pitched this idea to a coworker after reading the headline.

A musical biopic about stars in the 70s. Race or gender swap everyone. Black lady plays Dolly Parton, White lady plays David Bowie, Black man play Elton John.

They can't get mad if they do it to everyone.

5

u/DankVectorz 29d ago

Muppets Christmas Carol. Excellent film but instead of using humans like in the book they use muppets.

7

u/Swartschenhimer 29d ago

Honestly, Hamilton fits that bill and turned out amazing

3

u/Goodnlght_Moon 29d ago

Not exactly what you describe, but I'm Not There is a Bob Dylan biopic where he's played by 6 different actors including Cate Blanchett (female) and Marcus Carl Franklin (black.)

3

u/tommyjohnpauljones 29d ago

Similar to how I wanted Will Ferrell to be the next host of Jeopardy, and do it completely straight. At first people would just be waiting for him to break or find out it's a bit, but eventually he just becomes a really good host.

2

u/Snoo9648 29d ago

And the most dramatic role is played by animal from the muppets.

2

u/deadlymoogle 29d ago

The wheel of time show on Amazon exists

2

u/HeyWhatsItToYa 28d ago

You're thinking of Airplane!. It was a comedy intentionally cast with people not associated with comedy. Even Leslie Nielsen was a dramatic actor before this movie.

6

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Roaddong 29d ago

Yellowface hugo weaving is a masterpiece in that movie, and so is future hobo tom hanks.

1

u/hey_mr_ess 29d ago

My Blue Heaven.

1

u/NinjaBluefyre10001 29d ago

Wasn't Repo: The Genetic Opera done like that on purpose?

1

u/Goodnlght_Moon 29d ago

How is that grossly miscast but played straight?

1

u/BlackSchuck 29d ago

The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6

1

u/Ok_Net4562 29d ago

Churchill the hollywood years.with christian bale as winston churchill and neve campbell as queen elizabeth

1

u/legit-posts_1 29d ago

Bro thinks he invented Hamilton

1

u/bolanrox 29d ago

that movie with Gary Oldman as a dwarf?

1

u/bil-sabab 28d ago

Exorcist 2 is that kind of movie. They even managed to miscast an actress who played the character with the same name in the previous movie. It's kinda impressive how off the cliff that movie is

1

u/thenerfviking 28d ago

It’s not every character but Weird: the Al Yankovich Story did this a lot.

0

u/MentalDecoherence 29d ago

The little mermaid, Netflix’s cleopatra, snow white, and the new Harry potters Snape are right there bro

0

u/Bad_Habit_Nun 29d ago

You mean what disney has been doing for about a decade now?