The only actor who refused to audition for ‘Pulp Fiction’: “I don’t think my fans want to see that”
After Reservoir Dogs became a word-of-mouth sensation and established Quentin Tarantino as one of the industry’s most exciting new auteurs, his sophomore feature was instantly one of Hollywood’s hottest tickets, and it’s an understatement to say that Pulp Fiction delivered the goods.
The labyrinthine crime story was so influential that it fundamentally altered the landscape of American independent cinema in the 1990s, for better and worse. Suddenly, it felt like every second film from a relatively unknown writer and director was a Pulp Fiction knockoff, but none of them recaptured the magic.
Many things make it one of the greatest movies of the last three decades: Tarantino’s instantly quotable dialogue, the needle-drops that spawned a bestselling soundtrack, the eclectic cast of characters, and top-notch performances across the board from an ensemble that’s comfortably one of the most pitch-perfect mass castings of all time.
And to think, things could have been different had the studio gotten its way. Tarantino’s paymasters were trying to nudge him in the direction of Daniel Day-Lewis and Johnny Depp, but he stood his ground. Matt Dillon was offered a role but was quickly ruled out when he deliberated for too long, while Mickey Rourke made the mistake of turning down the filmmaker’s advances.
From the major players to the supporting figures and even the background bit-parters, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else embodying any part in Pulp Fiction, apart from maybe Tarantino’s ego-massaging cameo as Jimmy. However, Marsellus Wallace might have been played by the blaxploitation veteran Max Julien in a different timeline had he not refused to read for it.
Best known for co-writing Cleopatra Jones and playing the lead role of Goldie in The Mack, Samuel L Jackson revealed to Vanity Fair that he flat-out wasn’t interested, based on one scene. There are no prizes for guessing which scene turned him off the idea of Pulp Fiction, even if it was one Ving Rhames relished.
“Max Julien wasn’t going to do that,” Jackson said of the infamous sequence featuring Rhames’ Wallace, Bruce Willis’ Butch Coolidge, and the gimp. “He’s The Mack. He’s Goldie. He’s like, ‘No, I don’t think my fans want to see that.'” The actor who played the role, though, had no such concerns.
“Because of the way I look, I don’t ever get the opportunity to play vulnerable people,” Rhames explained, and he wasn’t dissuaded from the scene’s graphic and off-putting nature. Obviously, Julien didn’t feel quite the same about letting his guard down, exposing his vulnerabilities, and subverting the audience’s previous association with his blaxploitation heyday.
Laurence Fishburne turned down the part of Jules Winnfield that became a career-defining performance for Jackson, joining Rourke on the very short list of people who knocked back Pulp Fiction. The difference is that they most likely wouldn’t have had to audition when Tarantino had sought them out specifically, putting Julien in a class of his own after he declined to even take it under consideration.
In the end, it worked out for the best, with Rhames’ combination of physicality and sensitivity making him the ideal foil for a hardened crime boss who finds himself trapped in a terrifying situation.
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