In the world of Hollywood, leading roles for Black actresses come a dime a dozen. So, when the role Olivia Pope began available, A-listers, D-listers and everyone in between came out for the opportunity.
In a recent interview with CocoaFab, starlet Gabrielle Union revealed that she too auctioned for the career-changing part.
“There’s the whole group of us who auditioned for “Scandal” that, not just fell in love with that project and Shonda (Rhimes), but the process, the level of respect that we were given even in the audition process,” she said. “It was like, is there ever gonna be another situation for you like that? ”
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Although she’s not able to call herself a “gladiator in a suit,” the Being Mary Jane actress said she couldn’t be happier for Kerry Washington’s success.
“Kerry with “Scandal” and “Django” and the whole world is like, Gladiator!” she said. “Now you hope that the time of the black man is coming. You want them to have their “Scandal” and their “Deception” and their “Being Mary Jane” and you can see black love and black dysfunction.”
Click through the slides to see 8 other Hollywood stars who were either turned down or rejected roles.
1. Will Smith opens up on why he turned down the lead role in Django Unchained.
“Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, ‘I need to be the lead,'” Smith said. “The other character was the lead,” he added, refereeing to Christoph Waltz’s role of bounty hunter King Schultz.
“I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!’”
Smith also skipped out on Neo in The Matrix and Stu in Phone Booth.
2. Back in the early 80s, O.J Simpson was rejected for the lead role in The Terminator because producers feared he wouldn’t be a believer killer. Talk about irony.
3. Denzel Washington turned down the role of Curtis Taylor Jr. in Dreamgirls because reportedly he can’t sing.
The Oscar Award winner also passed on the leading role in Ray, performed by Jamie Foxx.
4. Halle Berry’s Oscar-winning role in Monster’s Ball was first offered to Angela Bassett and Vanessa Williams.
Bassett said she turned the role down because she “wasn’t going to be a prostitute on film.”
“I couldn’t do that because it’s such a stereotype about black women and sexuality,” she explained.
5. Terrence Howard went out for the lead role in the original Iron Man but lost out to Robert Downey Jr. Instead, Howard starred as Rhodey in 2008 flick.
6. Lindsay Lohan was offered a part in the 2009 blockbuster hit The Hangover. Producers wanted her to play the role of the escort, Jade, but she turned it down because she thought the screenplay “had no potential.” (Lindsay has a history of making bad decisions.)
7. Samuel L. Jackson turned down Laurence Fishburne’s role of Morpheus in The Matrix.
