Taika Waititi is a renowned filmmaker, actor, and comedian from New Zealand. He established himself among the ace directors of the Hollywood industry with films like Thor: Ragnarok. The director has also tried his hand at television projects with Reservation Dogs, Our Flag Means Death, The Mandalorian, and others. However, the film that won him his first Academy Award was one with Scarlett Johansson, named Jojo Rabbit.
The director revealed that his Oscar-winning film was rejected by numerous popular actors. Hence, he had to play the role of Hitler in his film.
Taika Waititi’s script was rejected by numerous A-listers
Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi directed the WWII dramedy Jojo Rabbit, based on Christine Leunens’s 2008 book Caging Skies. He shared that, at the time, it was essential to cast a famous actor to make a film successful. Hence, he sent the script to numerous A-lister actors to play the role of Hitler, however, all of them rejected the film.
Waititi shared in the interview with GQ,
“Then we started thinking, ‘Who would play this imaginary Hitler?’ Now, this was about 2011, and we started sending it out to different people. I don’t think a lot of actors even got to look at the script. Basically, a lot of agents were like, ‘hell no, I am not sending this to my client. There is no way in hell that, it’ll ruin my client’s career by making him play Hitler.’ So I don’t think a lot of these people actually got to see it, and we were going to these actors because at that time, you know, to make a film like this, you needed A-listers. You needed big names to be able to sell these films. What then happened is I went off, and I made What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor, I made three other films and just left that script on ice.”
After making a few successful films, the director then circled back to the script of Jojo Rabbit.
Taika Waititi reveals how he landed the role of Hitler in Jojo Rabbit
When the pre-production of the film commenced, the director Taika Waititi realized that he did not need a famous actor to play Hitler. At that time, people were interested in fresh talents and unique stories. He also realized a renowned actor would have overshadowed the simple story of two children.
The actor shared the interesting story of how he got the role of Hitler in the film,
“Searchlight picked up the script and said we want to make it under one condition that you play Hitler. I swear to you I know this is gonna seem like a lie I had no intention of playing that character when I wrote it. Look at me, I’m a brown supermodel.
On being asked about his preparation for the role, he shared,
“I did zero to no research about Hitler. I remember looking up books about Hitler on Amazon, I didn’t want to spend the money just out of principle. I don’t want to spend money on this. Then I was like I don’t even want to read about him. I don’t care about his life I don’t care about why he did things, I didn’t care about what was behind the motives behind anything. I wanted to ridicule him. I wanted to lambast him, even beyond the grave.”
The film won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for five other awards, including Best Picture, at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Scarlett Johansson’s film grossed $90.3 million worldwide.
Jojo Rabbit is available for streaming on Fubo and Direct TV.
Source- Youtube
