The iconic Morgan Freeman role rejected by Al Pacino and Gene Hackman: “Count me out”
After striking up a firm friendship shooting Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman spent years searching for another movie to make together.
It took them the better part of a decade to find the right project, and even though 2000’s disappointingly routine mystery thriller Under Suspicion couldn’t hold a candle to their previous masterpiece, the pair of legendary veterans did at least get the chance to enjoy each other’s company during production.
What remains unknown is whether the conversation between takes ever turned to the iconic role Hackman rejected that Freeman ended up playing, with the former’s loss turning out to be the latter’s gain when he delivered a standout turn in one of the greatest features of his career.
Hollywood’s most esteemed legends are always coveted for the parts that make the best use of their baggage and effortless authority, and they don’t come much more wizened or world-weary than Hackman and Freeman. Al Pacino is part of that club, too, and he also rejected the chance to star in a noir-tinged psychological thriller that became a critical and commercial smash hit before taking its place as one of the best films of the 1990s.
There was admittedly some trepidation on the part of the studio when David Fincher began putting the pieces together for his sophomore effort as a director, most of which were driven by the fact he was still relatively unproven and the third instalment of the Alien franchise – which he’s long since disowned – didn’t turn out to be the calling card he’d envisioned when he signed on.
However, the filmmaker still set his sights high when it came to casting William Somerset in Seven, and only one of the best in the business would do. Unfortunately, Fincher kept running into trouble when his first two top choices for the gig turned him down, and even then, he was nervous at the prospect of calling Freeman to offer him the role.
“Oh, boy,” he reflected to the Los Angeles Times. “They really wanted Al Pacino, and Al Pacino said no. I got involved after that. And I think the first person I spoke with was Gene Hackman. I went to meet Gene Hackman, who I was entirely intimidated by because, for my money, he might be the greatest motion picture actor of all time: just the kind of effortlessness, well-travelled humanness was something I really wanted.”
New Line Cinema had placed Pacino on the table, but he was quickly removed from play when he decided he wasn’t interested in tracking down a murderer inspired to commit his atrocities by the seven deadly sins. Hackman was an actor of a similar calibre, but he was at the point in his professional life where he was able to call his own shots. Unfortunately for Fincher, working at night wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
“I met with Gene and he said, ‘It sounds like there’s a lot of night shoots,'” he continued. “I think we had a 40-minute conversation. And I said, ‘Yeah, there is’. He said, ‘Count me out’. So that was that.” On the plus side, Freeman had no such issues, and his stoic Somerset made an excellent foil for Brad Pitt’s younger, brasher and more hot-headed David Mills.
