The role Woody Harrelson was banned from playing
It’s easy to forget that in the 1990s, given his aptitude for telling twisty, exciting legal stories, the work of author John Grisham was frequently adapted into major blockbusters, which led Hollywood to adapt many of his most famous novels, including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, and The Rainmaker, all to great success.
A Time To Kill was another book by Grisham, that was racially-charged and also quote popular, hence, it was a no-brainer that the upcoming film adaptation, which was slated to also star Woody Harrelson in an essential role was destined for major accolades.
The dark story opens in Canton, Mississippi, and explores the aftermath of the rape and torture of the ten-year-old African American girl Tonya Hailey, played by Rae’Ven Larrymore Kelly, whose father, Samuel L Jackson’s Carl, decides to take the law into his own hands to bring the perpetrators to justice. However, after finding the two men who abducted his daughter, he murders the pair, thus being arrested himself, following which the politically ambitious district attorney Rufus Buckley, brought to life by Kevin Spacey, decides to pursue the death penalty for Carl. It is then that his family contacts the lawyer Jake Brigance, known for defending African-American clients from racial prosecution, to save him from his underserved fate.
The casting of Brigance was of the utmost importance to the film, for it needed a dynamic star who could bring the necessary pathos to the role, and while director Joel Schumacher had originally planned to cast Harrelson, the choice was shot down by Grisham, as he was highly particular about who would take up the role, given he had based Brigance on himself.
The author’s unprecedented level of control on A Time To Kill created chaos for the production, as Schumacher nearly considered walking away from directing it entirely. Moreover, Harrelson had previously been so enthusiastic about the part that he considered postponing the shooting of Milos Forman’s biopic The People vs Larry Flynt, which, unknown to him at the point, would eventually earn him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
Although suggestions like Val Kilmer were thrown around as a potential replacement for Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey was eventually cast as Brigance. He had shown his merits as a comedic star with his scene-stealing role in Dazed and Confused, but it was A Time To Kill that turned him into one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, his work so adored that he would go on to star in auteur-driven projects like Contact, Amistad, and The Newton Boys in the subsequent years.
While the nature of Harrelson’s dismissal was unprecedented, it thankfully didn’t start any bad blood between him and McConaughey, and it was only three years after the release of the film that the two actors teamed up to appear in EDtv, a satirical comedy from director Ron Howard, which isn’t really the best-reviewed project of either one’s career.
However, they would earn much more praise years later when they teamed up once more for the first season of the HBO drama series True Detective, which seemed to change the medium altogether.
Thanks to its A-list stars, philosophical undertones, and masterful craftsmanship, True Detective was one of the first shows to be considered truly ‘cinematic’, and helped to coin the phrase ‘prestige television’. Given how many imitators and admirers True Detective has spawned, it’s a bit ironic that Harrelson and McConaughey’s best project together will be remembered much longer than anything having to do with A Time to Kill.
