Casting What-Ifs
Jon Hamm, slated for Nick until Mad Men's Matthew Weiner would not release him; Tom Cruise and George Clooney weighed for Nick; Reese Witherspoon, who held the rights to play Amy before Fincher talked her out of it; Charlize, Natalie Portman, Emily Blunt, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Julianne Hough considered for Amy; Emily Ratajkowski cast on Ben Affleck's recommendation
In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 01:06:51Read transcript
- In the formal casting what-ifs, most having been covered already, the one new item is that Fincher cast Emily Ratajkowski on a recommendation from Ben Affleck, which the hosts find the funniest thing they have heard and worth a shout-out, joking about hiring her as a football writer to cover the NFC.
- Jon Hamm was going to play Nick but Matthew Weiner would not let him out of his contract for the last season of Mad Men, the way The Office accommodated Ed Helms filming The Hangover at night; the part could have ignited Hamm's career as Don Draper in a bad marriage, though whether Hamm would have done the side dick is called the only question that matters.
- The case against Hamm is that the role needs innate likability, and nobody ever simply liked Don Draper even if Hamm is loved in The Town and Baby Driver; the counter is that Nick is supposed to seem rationally likable yet somehow repellent, which Hamm could swing.
- The relationship we have with Hamm is with Don Draper, while with Affleck it is with Affleck the public person; a Hamm version would still have been a good movie, because the film is about marriage, what women and men say they want, stardom and the media, bigger than Fincher's narcissism explanation; another voice thinks Hamm would have been good but loves that Affleck did this at the point of his completed comeback.
- Tom Cruise as Nick Dunn is floated, with one voice calling the idea amazing, and rejected by the rest: he is too short and lacks Affleck's bulk and wide shoulders, you need to believe Nick can keep up with Amy, you need to see his belly exposed when he rolls over, and nobody can picture Cruise sitting down for Battlefield 3; Clooney fifteen years earlier is possible but a little too skinny.
- Reese Witherspoon obtained the film rights intending to produce and play Amy, met Fincher and somehow gave the part up; the hosts cannot picture her riding Neil Patrick Harris covered in blood, finding her too earnest, open and likable to go dead-eyed the way Amy requires.
- Other names reported for Amy: Charlize and Natalie Portman, both of whom would have been interesting though Charlize carries baggage as an actress, Emily Blunt, Rooney Mara whom Fincher had just worked with, Olivia Wilde, and strangest of all Dancing with the Stars' Julianne Hough, who got far down the road before her bid at a serious acting career stalled.
- Fincher wanted an actress with a Faye Dunaway in Chinatown persona, someone who has experienced avenues of pain no one can articulate; he settled on Rosamund Pike because at 35 she could pass for 29 or 40, she was an only child like Amy, and after four or five of her movies he had never got a beat on her, an opacity he found interesting, when the natural move would have been Charlize.
- Fincher has always had an eye for unproven, on-the-cusp talent, Pitt in Seven, Eisenberg and Rooney Mara in The Social Network, Mahershala Ali and Taraji Henson in Benjamin Button; the hosts expected Pike's career to go somewhere else after her Oscar nomination, and before this her notable role was Jack Reacher, an embarrassing part two years earlier.
- Asked whether baggage with a real celebrity hurts a part like this, the answer is that for Amy you need to be totally confused about the person, the opposite of the Affleck character whom you must root for implicitly, so somebody you have never seen before makes it scarier. — Shea Serrano
- Pike's biggest role until then was Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, the book that turns up in the bookshop where they have sex.