How Mike Myers getting fired from a comedy troupe got an actor cast in James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’
Making a sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made is a daunting task, albeit one James Cameron proved himself more than capable of when Aliens also became known as one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. The film’s most devoted fans might think they know everything about it, but how many can say they knew Mike Myers was inadvertently part of the casting process?
The reasonable answer would be not many, because the Canadian comedian has absolutely nothing to do with Aliens, the never-ending franchise, or any of Cameron’s other work. And yet, seeing as he’s the guy who ended up voicing the title character in Shrek because of Saving Private Ryan, it sort of bizarrely makes sense.
Hollywood’s domino effect comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes, and at no point would anyone have imagined that the future Saturday Night Live staple being given his marching orders from an improvisational comedy troupe in the mid-1980s would impact the casting of one of the decade’s most exciting, pulse-pounding, and adrenaline-pumping action flicks.
Aliens‘ ensemble is populated by many memorable characters, from Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ellen Ripley to Bill Paxton’s scene-stealing Hudson via Michael Biehn’s stoic Hicks and, of course, the Alien Queen. Daniel Kash’s Spunkmeyer isn’t necessarily one of them, and the name is enough to induce titters in certain circles, but he wouldn’t have even been part of the movie if it wasn’t for Myers getting the boot.
“Mike Myers was fired from Second City in Toronto, and he was sleeping on my couch in London, and we were playing football in the park, and I broke my leg,” Kash explained to Den of Geek. “And I had a cast on and got this call for Aliens. I was still in my drama school headspace, thinking I didn’t want to do some bullshit movie about space.”
While the aspiring actor appreciated the first half of Ridley Scott’s original, he felt “the second half was just a chase movie, really.” Still, because he hadn’t yet made a name for himself, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to go in and audition for the follow-up despite wearing a cast on his broken leg.
The combination of his lack of enthusiasm for Aliens and the misery brought on by hobbling around on crutches meant that Kash wasn’t exactly a happy chappy when he showed up to read, initially for the part eventually filled by Paxton, but he made an impression after accidentally criticising Cameron to his face.
“I went in on these crutches in this coat, for Hudson’s role, and I said to these two assistants, ‘Guys, tell whoever wrote this to rewrite it, I think it’s silly,'” he recalled. “And then I got a recall and went back, and realised that the two assistants I was pushing around were James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd!”
Kash’s complete and utter apathy towards the material, coupled with his obliviousness towards the creative team and the pain he was in from dragging himself down to the audition with a broken leg, evidently made an impression on Cameron, who offered him the Spunkmeyer gig following his second audition.
Would he have gotten the part if his leg hadn’t been shattered? Who knows, but what’s undeniably true is that it wouldn’t have been broken in the first place if it hadn’t been for Myers, and he nabbed the gig.
