The character Morgan Freeman always wanted to play: “I should do it if I can interest the right people”
Throughout his career, Morgan Freeman has always excelled at playing characters imbued with a sense of decency and righteousness. This is, after all, the man who so famously played kindly prisoner Red in The Shawshank Redemption, the wise, learned Detective Somerset in Se7en, and beloved South African President Nelson Mandela in Invictus.
Of course, Freeman also embodied the ultimate benevolent figure in our culture when he played God himself in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. Fascinatingly, though, Freeman has always wanted to play the other side of the coin – a role that would see him embrace his dark side to a previously unheard-of degree.
In truth, Freeman’s desire to walk on the wild side has been a part of his career for as long as he’s existed as cinematic shorthand for kindly, sage mentor figures. He’s always balanced out roles where he operates on the side of the angels with ones where he dirties up his image somewhat. For instance, he played a sweary hitman in 2000’s Nurse Betty, the leader of an ancient secret society of assassins in Wanted, and a vicious gangster in Lucky Number Slevin.
In 2006, Freeman revealed to The Independent that he and late co-star Bob Hoskins waxed lyrical about playing villains between takes on 2005’s Unleashed. Freeman said: “He confirmed exactly what I was thinking. With bad guys, you get to let it all out. All those dark places in your psyche? You can let them go. When you play good guys, it’s kind of boring. It’s one note.”
In that same interview, though, after Freeman spoke about playing God, he was asked if he’d ever thought about playing Satan himself, the yang to God’s yin. The star immediately became excited by the prospect and revealed that it wasn’t just something he’d idly thought about – it was a dream role he’d already given serious consideration. He mused, “I had a fantasy, to tell you the truth. That I should do it. If I could interest the right people.
Freeman even ruminated on what his approach to playing Lucifer would be one day while he was washing his face and looking in the mirror. “I had this whole dialogue with myself,” he revealed before surprising his interviewer with a sinister, serpentine vocal tone dripping with malice. “You people – talking about the world at large – you astound me sometimes how ignorant you are about yourselves,” he said. “Don’t you know who I really am?” Then, in a low, hushed register, he declared, “And it’s the Devil talking.”
Amazingly, Freeman had even thought about how his Devil would look – and it wouldn’t be any different than the crisp white-suited image he sported in Bruce Almighty. You see, to Freeman, God and the Devil are “both sides of the same person” and an audience shouldn’t be able to tell them apart from what they’re wearing. His Beelzebub would wear Prada and be extraordinarily charming, neatly masking the sly malevolence at play just beneath the surface.
Sadly, Freeman has yet to get his wish, and playing the Devil has thus far eluded him. However, in a parallel universe somewhere, there was a Bruce Almighty sequel entitled Bruceifer, which saw Jim Carrey’s Bruce Nolan make a deal with Satan instead of God. The film’s screenwriters envisioned Freeman switching sides for this sequel to play the Devil, who bestows Bruce with his Satanic powers, but the idea never got off the ground – no doubt to Freeman’s chagrin.
