Taika Waititi Reveals He Was Forced To Play Jojo Rabbit’s Hitler After All A-Lister Celebs Said ‘Hell No!’ & Rejected His Offer
Hollywood director and actor Taika Waititi in a recent interview shared how he was forced to play the role of Hitler in 2019’s Jojo Rabbit. The director-actor is a renowned name in the industry who gained worldwide recognition after working with Marvel Studios on Thor: Ragnarok. His recently released fourth sequel in the Thor franchise, Thor: Love and Thunder led by Chris Hemsworth is now been played in theatres.
The 46-year-old director appeared in an interview with GQ where he revealed working on 2019’s black comedy film Jojo Rabbit was not his choice. This film was written and directed by Taika Waititi and is adapted from Christine Leunens’s 2008 book Caging Skies.
Taika Waititi Discussed The Need for A-List Actors Required To Make The Film
Also Read: Waititi Reveals His Plans For Thor 5, Internet Prepares to Prevent This Travesty
The director shared with GQ that they had started looking for a person who would take on the role of Hitler which was played by him in the movie. Around 2011, he shared that he started hunting people by sending scripts to different people and agencies that manage the actors, “we started sending it out to different people. I don’t think a lot of actors even got to look at the script.”
He further shared the thought process of agents and told that his script might not have been reached out to many people, “Basically, I think a lot of agents were like – hell no, I’m not sending this to my client. There’s no way in hell, it’ll ruin my client’s career, making them play Hitler. So I don’t think a lot of these people actually got to see it. We were going to these actors because at the time, to make a film like this, you needed A-listers.”
How He Was Cast As The Imaginary Adolf Hitler in Jojo Rabbit
The director shared that he kept the movie on hold when he knew that A-list actors would be needed to make that movie and made movies like What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok. He further added, “By the time I came back to it, the whole cinematic landscape had changed and you didn’t need A-listers to sell your film anymore, you actually just needed good films.”
He shared how Searchlight went ahead with the script and demanded, ‘we want to make it, under one condition – that you play Hitler.’ He shared that he “had no intention of playing that character when I wrote it.”
He, later on, accepted the fact that an A-list actor playing Hitler in “a small film about two kids overcoming their differences and intolerances,” would be “overshadowed when you have a massive celebrity playing Hitler.”
Thor: Love and Thunder is now playing in theatres.
Source: YouTube
