The director who was too scared to send their script to Morgan Freeman: “He’ll never want to talk to me”
Morgan Freeman has made more than a hundred movies in his day and is still working steadily. His skill as an actor is often overshadowed by the persona he has built on-screen – that reassuring voice and calm manner that makes him instantly appealing to audiences. However, his acting abilities were on full display even before he took to Hollywood or won an Oscar for his role in Million Dollar Baby.
Freeman began his career on the stage and even appeared on Broadway before taking any lead roles in movies. In the 1970s, he was performing Shakespeare, winning an Obie (an award for Off-Broadway productions) for her performance in Coriolanus. When he broke into Hollywood, Freeman was already a seasoned actor, and his screen presence reflected that calm authority that could command a stage.
His breakthrough didn’t come until 1989, though, a time when he reprised his stage role of a chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy. This film and the Ed Zwick period war drama Glory were released on the same day, and they made him a bonafide star.
With this background, it’s no wonder that a brand new director with a controversial script felt slightly nervous about approaching Freeman about starring in his new film. When David Fincher agreed to make Se7en, he had just come off the success of making Alien 3, where he had replaced Vincent Ward as director. When he was sent the script of Se7en, a brutal horror movie disguised as a police procedural, he was asked if he wanted to talk to Freeman about playing the older police officer, William Somerset. Fincher was horrified by the idea.
Speaking to Screen Daily in 2014, the director remembered saying, “We can’t send him the script, Morgan Freeman is a genius. If we send him the script, he’ll never want to talk to me.” To his surprise, he was told that Freeman had already read the script and wanted to do the role.
In the movie, Freeman plays a police officer who is one week from retirement when he’s paired with a brash young rookie played by Brad Pitt to catch a serial killer committing murders based on the seven deadly sins. It marked a decisive departure for Pitt, who had previously played pretty-boy roles and was itching to free himself from typecasting. He had made one attempt earlier with the gruesome serial killer thriller Kalifornia but would later seal his transition with movies like 12 Monkeys and Fight Club.
For Freeman, it was also a transition. It demonstrated his range as a screen presence and also demonstrated that he could be a bankable star rather than simply a critically acclaimed performer. Se7en gave him one of his most memorable roles and helped launch Fincher to auteur status. It even earned an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Film Editing’. Fincher and Pitt went on to even greater success with Fight Club four years later, while Freeman went on to his most beloved movie, The Shawshank Redemption, in 1995, which would nab him his third Oscar nomination.
