Why Timothy Olyphant doesn’t regret rejecting a role worth $7 billion: “I love those movies”
In 2000, Neal H Moritz met with Universal Pictures to convince the studio to green-light a new action thriller he was producing. The executives liked the concept, but had one proviso: the movie, which was budgeted at a substantial $38million, would only be put into production if Moritz convinced Timothy Olyphant to play the lead role.
These days, Olyphant is a beloved star of film and television, most recently lending his talents to FX’s Alien: Earth, the AppleTV+ golf comedy Stick, and the Netflix action spectacular Havoc.
Over the years, though, he has undoubtedly become most beloved for his roles as Sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO’s profane western Deadwood and US Marshal Raylan Givens in the modern-day western Justified. In his own way, Olyphant is one of the most beloved actors working today, but one thing he isn’t – mostly by his own design – is a bankable blockbuster leading man.
However, back in 2000, Universal evidently saw that potential in him. By then, Olyphant had stolen the show in a supporting role in Scream 2, caught the eye as a menacing drug dealer in Go, and played a detective on the trail of Nicolas Cage’s carjacking crew in Gone in 60 Seconds. Indeed, it’s likely that film that put him on Universal’s radar for Moritz’s prospective movie: a street-racing thriller you may have heard of entitled The Fast and the Furious.
“The studio said, ‘If you get Timothy Olyphant to play the role of Dominic Toretto, the movie’s green-lit,” Moritz told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. “We went to Tim and he passed.”
Unfortunately for Moritz, Olyphant had no desire to become an action hero at that time, and couldn’t envision himself playing the ultra-masculine, pumped-up Toretto. “I remember thinking, ‘I can’t make this work. Why would I be in this?'” Olyphant chuckled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023.
In the end, Olyphant’s turning Moritz down was probably a blessing in disguise because it forced the producer to look elsewhere for the ideal Toretto. The role, of course, went to the bald, musclebound Vin Diesel, who is absolutely nothing like Olyphant. From that original movie was born a franchise that has made more than $7 billion at the box office.
When asked if he thought there would have been ten movies and a spinoff in the franchise if he’d played Toretto instead of Diesel, the laconic Olyphant mused, “I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, that, no, they would not.”
He went on to admit that he’d never actually watched a Fast and Furious entry, but acknowledged they are “so part of the culture that I know what they are”, before admitting that the series “got the right guy” in the lead.
Indeed, Olyphant always gives the same answer when asked if he regrets missing out on such a lucrative role. He didn’t think he was right for the part and had no issue turning it down, but the fact that the franchise went on to be hugely successful doesn’t provoke jealousy. Instead, he insists, “I love those movies. I’m thrilled that they worked for everybody involved.”
At the end of the day, Olyphant’s career has turned out exactly how he wanted it to, and he has admitted that playing a character like Toretto may have tipped his fame balance into uncomfortable territory. “I love attention as much as the next guy in the Screen Actors Guild,” Olyphant joked. “But mostly – and let me stress mostly – I’ve thought to myself, ‘Thank God I am not any more famous than I am.’ I just think it would be bad for everybody involved.”
