Seth Rogen says Nicolas Cage had quite the wild audition for 2011’s The Green Hornet
In a town full of them, Seth Rogen might’ve had the wildest Nicolas Cage experience yet.
Rogen, 39, appeared on The Howard Stern Show recently where he recalled the time he almost worked with the eccentric actor when Cage auditioned for The Green Hornet, a comedic superhero movie starring Rogen that came out in 2011.
According to the star, his interactions with Cage, 57, were wild from the start. Cage first told Rogen he thought his character should be bald with tattoos covering his head. But then, as Rogen recalls it, the Oscar winner took it back after realizing he might want to tattoo his head in real life.
Then Cage said he thought his character should be a “white Bahamian man,” with Rogen admitting that “set off a lot of alarms.” Rogen said he thought they could talk it out at dinner with then-Sony chairman Amy Pascal.
“And I remember going there with Evan [Goldberg] my partner and just being like, ‘I just don’t want him to do it in front of us. I’ll just be so uncomfortable,’ ” Rogen recalled saying as they arrived at Pascal’s home. “And I remember Evan being like, ‘He’s not going to do it. He’ll talk about it. He won’t launch into it. That would be too much.'”
“And literally within 60 seconds, we were all seated at the house as he stands in front of us reciting a monologue, talking in a Jamaican accent,” Rogen remembered. “And we were just like, ‘It’s happening.'”
What’s more, Cage seemed to have made up his own monologue since it didn’t “have anything to do with the script,” Rogen recalled realizing. When it ended, Cage was shocked at the lukewarm reception.
“It ends and, it is like he had just completed a backflip and he’s waiting for the applause,” Rogen said. “At which point everyone looks to me to express the group reaction. I was like, ‘It was OK. Cool. Thanks. We should talk about it. That’s not how we pictured the character.'”
Rogen said Cage’s demeanor “instantly fell.” Moments later, “we all sit down for dinner and almost right away he just gets up and leaves,” Rogen recalled.
It’s unclear what character Cage auditioned for, but the movie ended up starring Christopher Waltz in the main villain role.
Rogen’s new memoir Yearbook is now out.
[People]
