What’s the most outlandish casting idea in the history of Hollywood? In a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter with Bowen Yang, Jake Johnson, Jerrod Carmichael, Michael Che, and Will Forte, Danny McBride may have the best answer to that question imaginable. And given the source of the idea, it kind of sort of makes sense, in an odd way.
At the end of the nearly hour-long discussion with the comedians, host Lacey Rose’s final question to the group was simple: out of anyone in the industry, who do you most want to have call you up to work with them? The answers were funny but obvious. Michael Che referenced many of those dream collabs coming true on “Saturday Night Live.” Jerrod Carmichael said he’d love to play business mogul David Geffen so he could get onto Geffen’s massive yacht. But after a lull in laughter, McBride shocked the table with this juicy anecdote.
“One time, I did get a phone call from Kanye West, and, this is real, he came to my house in South Carolina and wanted me to play him in a movie,” said McBride. Everyone else at the roundtable stared at McBride in disbelief before Bowen Yang piped up, “you to play him?!” “Yeah,” McBride continued, “[Kanye] flew down to South Carolina, and I took him out in a boat for the day, and he said that he wanted…me to do a movie of his life, and he wanted me to play him.”
Still confounded, Yang queried, “In an [Todd Haynes’] “I’m Not There” Bob Dylan way? Like, Cate Blanchett?” “I’m Not There” is Hayne’s 2007 experimental biopic about Dylan’s life where Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin each play the songwriter. McBride demurred further elaboration about Kanye’s idea and simply said, “It was one of the most incredible days ever; it was pretty awesome.”
So, there’s an idea: “The Righteous Gemstones” star and comedic powerhouse McBride as the most influential rapper of all time, or at least of the 21st century. How Kanye, or Ye as he goes by now, hatched this idea is anyone’s guess. Still, given the rapper’s grandiosity and erratic behavior, it’s not difficult to believe he thinks McBride is the perfect fit to play him in a biopic.
Lacey Rose tried to pry more out of McBride afterward when she asked, “What are the follow-up questions that you then lob [to Kanye]?” But Carmichael took over the conversation, referencing the idea as a “Tropic Thunder” situation (as in, McBride would essentially perform blackface if he played Kanye as Robert Downey Jr. did in the 2008 film). Not necessarily, if Ye wanted his biopic to be more “I’m Not There” than “Tropic Thunder.”
So, imagine that for a moment: Danny McBride, with his coiffed curly hair, playing the rap legend and ex-Mr. Kim Kardashian, Kanye West. Stranger things have happened, but on some level, what other actor or comedian besides McBride could pull off West’s uncontainable, swaggering confidence? Even so, maybe it’s best to leave this idea in development hell. Watch the entire roundtable conversation below.