The role Matthew McConaughey snatched away from Woody Harrelson: “That moves him out”
After a breakout performance in Dazed and Confused, Matthew McConaughey was predicted to be a global star but ended up having a slow-burning journey to stardom.
After a few roles in low-budget independent features, the actor later spoke about feeling disheartened and disappointed during the years following. But, in 1996, he was offered a leading role in A Time to Kill, which marked the beginning of his Hollywood rebirth and skyrocketed his career to the heights that were first foreshadowed. Although McConaughey now seems like the perfect person for this role, he wasn’t the first choice, with his now creative partner in crime Woody Harrelson being suggested for the role.
Directed by Joel Schumacher, A Time to Kill follows a young lawyer who is tasked with defending a Black man accused of murdering two white men after they raped his ten-year-old daughter. The film was based on John Grisham’s first novel, with the writer already having success with Hollywood adaptations of his work after The Firm was developed for the screen with Tom Cruise in the lead role.
However, the novelist felt more attached towards A Time to Kill and became more involved in the casting process, perhaps because the main character was based on himself. Because of this, Grisham had strong opinions on who should play the lead role, some of which clashed with Schumacher’s ideas.
Schumacher felt very strongly that Woody Harrelson should play the role of Jake Brigance, but Grisham was very opposed to this idea and invoked his cast approval rights, refusing to allow Harrelson to take on this role. While this could be interpreted as a somewhat personal attack, Grisham had a strong reason for this decision.
Harrelson had previously starred in Natural Born Killers, a very violent tale about two killers on the run. However, Grisham hated this film because of the extreme violence and didn’t want Harrelson’s character to be associated with one that was based on himself. As well as this, one of Grisham’s friends was murdered after the release of the film, with the killers citing Natural Born Killers in their statement after the crime.
Because of this, the team eventually settled on McConaughey, with the actor saying, “They were looking at Woody, but Woody had come out in Natural Born Killers. Oliver Stone and John Grisham get in an editorial fight because there was a copycat murder in Mississippi of someone that garnered some news. I heard John Grisham was going, ‘Oh, no way that guy, Woody, who played Mickey is going to play me.’ That moves him out.”
Grisham’s personal reasons for not casting Harrelson led to a career-making role for McConaughey, with the actor going on to have a long streak within the iconic rom-coms of the 2000s and eventually, reuniting with Harrelson for True Detective in 2014, with the pair also discovering that they are distantly related. This bizarre twist of fate could be taken as a sign that there was an alternate path intended for both actors and while McConaughey stole this role away from Harrelson, it was maybe meant to be and paved their individual roads to success.
