“The media rained down negativity on it”: the character Woody Harrelson thought would be a big problem
Small-screen sitcoms have provided cinema with a steady stream of stars over the decades, and Woody Harrelson wasted little time shedding his Cheers persona to play as many different characters as possible.
Appearing in almost 200 episodes of one of its era’s most popular shows as a character carrying the same first name that he did in real life could have easily led to typecasting. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the majority of Harrelson’s first forays into feature filmmaking occupied the same genre.
By the time he wrapped up his Cheers run in 1993, the biggest hit of Harrelson’s cinematic career was comfortably White Men Can’t Jump, which was, of course, a comic caper. However, his next two roles mixed things up considerably, with Adrian Lyne’s erotic drama Indecent Proposal being immediately followed by Oliver Stone’s crime thriller Natural Born Killers.
Playing decidedly against type, Harrelson’s Mickey Knox and Juliette Lewis’ Mallory become tabloid sensations after embarking on a cross-country killing spree. The performance required presence, charisma, ferocity, and self-reflexiveness to embrace the satirical element without glorifying the subject matter, but the actor was bemused as to how he ended up getting the gig in the first place.
“We thought it was kind of weird because when I was cast in Natural Born Killers, the only things Oliver Stone could have seen me in were Cheers and White Men Can’t Jump. Even Indecent Proposal hadn’t come out,” he admitted to Interview. “So it was weird that he cast me, but he just said, ‘I see something in your eyes.'”
Fortunately, the affable Harrelson took it as a compliment that the multi-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker thought he had the look of a murderer about him, but there was still another concern at the back of his mind. “Ironically, when the movie came out, I thought the big problem would be that people wouldn’t believe my character,” he confessed. “But the big fallout actually came from the violence in the movie.”
Like many people, Harrelson viewed Natural Born Killers as “a misunderstood romantic comedy,” an opinion that wasn’t echoed by everyone. Denounced for painting its central characters in too much of a heroic light for some tastes, he’s entirely right in saying that “the media rained down negativity on it”. It was hugely polarising when it was first released, but over time, the provocative crime story has become a firm cult favourite.
Unfortunately, it was linked to several copycat crimes that tarnished its reputation by association and very rarely gave rise to any headlines of a positive nature, which made Harrelson’s worries that nobody would buy the guy from Cheers as a serial killer look equal parts irrelevant and redundant by comparison.
