The Jim Carrey role almost played by Hugh Grant: “That’s a pretty different actor”
If there’s one aspect of picking through the annals of Hollywood history that is always fun, it’s coming across a juicy casting “What if?” After all, very few roles are ever cast with the first and only person who expressed an interest. Instead, parts in major motion pictures are contested by numerous actors before being whittled down to the one person who becomes etched in our minds as a character. It means there are probably parallel universes where Tom Selleck played Indiana Jones or Eric Stoltz didn’t get sacked as Marty McFly – and maybe even one in which Hugh Grant embodied one of the most beloved rubber-limbed Jim Carrey roles.
This story goes all the way back to the early 1990s when screenwriter Paul Guay had an idea he hastily scribbled on a napkin. He soon showed it to his screenwriting partner Stephen Mazur, and the pair began developing it into a fully-fledged script. In this period, the pair had written the 1994 Little Rascals movie, so they began envisioning Guay’s concept as a kid’s movie.
“Originally, it was a story about a little kid who promised his grandmother he wouldn’t lie, and it caused all sorts of problems for the kid,” Mazur told SyFy Wire in 2024. “But we decided that we didn’t want to write kids’ movies exclusively, so we converted it to be about an adult.”
A movie about an adult known for lying who is suddenly forced to tell the truth seemed to be ripe with possibilities, but for some reason, Guay and Mazur couldn’t quite crack the thing that would make it sing. They considered several professions for the main character, asking themselves, “Is this guy in real estate? Is he in politics? Is he a boxing promoter? Is he a lawyer?” However, because they couldn’t quite settle on a definitive idea, they weren’t exactly putting their best foot forward when pitching it to studios – and their unique concept died on the vine.
In fact, Mazur revealed that their manager called them after a couple of misfiring pitches and said, “This is a disaster. Not only do they not want to buy this movie, but it’s hurting your careers by pitching this idea. They don’t like this idea at all.” The horrified screenwriting team quickly cancelled the rest of their planned meetings, and the idea went into a drawer.
Amazingly, though, the idea was resurrected a few years later when the pair sat down with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment for a general meeting. In the meeting, it was mentioned that Mazur was once a Los Angeles prosecutor and production executive, David Friendly, responded by saying Grazer was “interested in doing something about a lawyer.” Seizing their opportunity, the pair quickly pitched their idea – entitled, of course, Liar Liar – in less than a minute. Despite it bombing so badly a few years earlier, Friendly loved it, and that very day, they were hired to write a full script after a slightly longer two-minute pitch in front of Grazer.
As the duo began scripting truth-deficient lawyer Fletcher Reede’s journey toward becoming a better person, they imagined someone like Steve Martin or Tom Hanks in the lead. Their ideal candidate would be “somebody who can do physical comedy and who is at home with tugging at the heartstrings” but also has a “certain amount of dramatic heft.” They were intrigued when Hugh Grant was thrown into the mix, but to their chagrin, he had to drop out after becoming embroiled in a scandal after he was caught receiving oral sex in his car on Sunset Boulevard from sex worker Divine Brown.
During this period, Jim Carrey was becoming frustrated with waiting on the script for The Truman Show, which he had been promised would be finished soon but was repeatedly delayed. Seeing an opening, Grazer sent Liar Liar to Carrey – then the biggest comedy star in the business – and he almost immediately said “yes” thanks to that Truman-shaped hole in his schedule. In what must be one of the understatements of the century, Guay noted, “That’s a pretty different actor than Hugh Grant.”
Everything moved quickly after Carrey became involved, and Liar Liar became a huge hit in 1997. However, Guay couldn’t help thinking, “Wouldn’t it have been fun to be able to compare the two versions?” He wondered how the Hugh Grant version of Reede – a sly, seemingly sophisticated cad who uses his Britishness to make people think he’s classier than he is – would have stacked up against Carrey’s antic, “I need to outdo Jerry Lewis” incarnation of the character.
If only we had access to that casting “What if?” parallel universe, eh?
