“There could be blowback”: The role Matt Damon refused to reprise because his mother told him to
Even when you’re an established Hollywood star with an Academy Award and a string of hits worth billions to your name, you’re never too old to listen to your mother: just ask Matt Damon.
It wasn’t the first time, either. When he was contemplating whether or not to starve himself and head into the jungle with Werner Herzog, which is an experience most actors would love to tick off their bucket list, ol’ Nancy stepped in and suggested that maybe her son should think about doing something fun instead.
Taking the advice to heart, Damon opted to team up with the Farrelly brothers at the expense of one of cinema’s most eccentric auteurs, and while playing a conjoined twin alongside Greg Kinnear in Stuck on You hardly shattered cinematic boundaries, it sounds a lot more relaxing than what Christian Bale went through to play Dieter Dengler in Herzog’s war drama.
The second time Nancy stepped up to the plate and batted an offer away from her child, it was a part that he was more familiar with. The one he’s played the most, in fact, but after spending three films winning widespread acclaim and redefining the early 21st-century action genre with the Bourne trilogy, a word in the ear from his mother convinced him that he didn’t want to go it again.
Of course, he did eventually when he and Paul Greengrass re-teamed for 2016’s Jason Bourne, but when the leading man was approached to lend his voice and likeness to the 2008 video game, The Bourne Conspiracy, his maw, a schoolteacher by trade, insisted that it was too violent and a risk for impressionably young kids who could control a digital Damon beating the shit out of his enemies.
Tie-in video games associated with movies or established franchises have a high percentage of turning out to be crap, too, which may have also swayed him. However, at the expense of making his console debut, a bridge he’s yet to cross in his career, the Good Will Hunting co-writer and Ben Affleck’s platonic soulmate listened to the voice of reason and took Nancy’s urging to heart.
“I accept and agree with what she says,” he confirmed, endorsing his mother as the continued and ongoing voice of reason. “That desensitises kids, and there could be blowback from it.” Battering an assailant with a newspaper onscreen? Perfectly fine, apparently. Standing in a recording booth and having the youths pilot around an ass-kicking Matt Damon of their own? Too far.
In the end, The Bourne Conspiracy wasn’t a particularly good or memorable game, so he didn’t have anything to worry about. And yet, had he agreed to provide his face and dulcet tones, he would have had something exponentially more terrifying to worry about: disappointing his poor mother.
With that in mind, it’s worth wondering if either Damon or Greengrass needed her approval before the fourth Bourne flick, seeing as she wielded enough power to make him think twice about returning to the role almost a decade previously.
