“Listen, I want in!”: the role Idris Elba begged for and still didn’t get
The one role that got away from Idris Elba could have completely changed his career.
He may have put himself on the map with his terrifying performance as Stringer Bell in the HBO prestige TV series The Wire, but the actor has since become a favourite among blockbuster filmmakers, so while he has lead major films like Hobbs and Shaw and The Suicide Squad, he has so much natural talent that such choices make it seem that his potential has been somewhat squandered.
Elba’s name has frequently been mentioned as a potential contender to play James Bond, for which he would be the first Black 007 in franchise history. Although the 53-year-old London native might be too old at this point to star in Amazon’s Bond reboot, he is still often able to surprise people with how charming and versatile he can be.
He isn’t only an accomplished rapper and DJ, but a classically trained theatre student with extensive experience on the stage. Unfortunately, Elba’s one chance to appear in a Hollywood musical was in Tom Hooper’s Cats, a disastrously failed project that was subjected to significant ridicule; he isn’t bad in the film, but it’s hard to take any of the cast seriously, given the awful computer-generated imagery used to give them digital fur.
What makes the disappointment of Cats so extreme is that Elba had previously auditioned for another major musical adaptation that he would have been much better suited for. “I auditioned for Beauty and the Beast,” he admitted, “I really did, for Gaston. I called, I said, ‘Listen, I want in!’ They were like, ‘Ah, uh, ah, OK!’ So somewhere they have a tape of me singing.”
The actor revealed that he was told he was “a little too old” to play the character, who is intent on romancing Emma Watson’s Belle. Although he jokingly said that he resented Luke Evans, who was ultimately cast in the role, “only a little bit”, he was won over when he saw the final film, calling him a “great actor”.
Of all the remakes that Walt Disney Studios have made of their classic animated film, 2017’s new version of Beauty and the Beast is among the most polarising. While it wasn’t as aggressively terrible as Pinocchio or The Lion King, the film changed so little from the 1991 original that it’s hard to see there being any legitimate creative need to remake it.
Disney certainly didn’t regret their decision, given that it still grossed over $1billion, but some of the casting was negatively received; Watson’s voice wasn’t quite up to the standards of her Broadway counterparts, and Dan Stevens was given little to do because of the way that the Beast was characterised. The overly grey, moody atmosphere certainly wasn’t as expressive as the animated classic.
Evans is by far the best thing in Beauty and the Beast, and was able to add a great deal of comedy to what was otherwise a fairly flat film. While it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role, Elba has shown a similarly surprising knack for comedy and could have very easily nailed the part. Perhaps the only solution is for Hollywood to make more traditional Broadway musical adaptations, and to cast Elba and Evans as co-stars; the former even specifically referenced his appreciation for Guys and Dolls, which is in need of a remake, anyway.
