Even more related Wes Anderson film news today – this time in the form of some trivia even the most hard-core of us didn’t seem to know (or at least we’d never read this before and as you might of noticed we’ve scoured and devoured).
Apparently Jason Schwartzman was originally intended to be in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” During the recent press tours for “The Darjeeling Limited,” Schwartzman revealed that he was originally supposed to play the now-redacted character Mordecai, but was cut out of the script because it was getting too long with too many characters (amen to that, at least one smart decision was made). His character was supposed to be a child prodigy that lived next door (not unlike Owen Wilson‘s Eli Cash character), wore white suits and drank chocolate milk.
Astute Anderson fans will realize that the Mordecai name was later transfered over to Richie Tenenbaum’s (Luke Wilson) pet hawk.
From MTV:
Wes Anderson: We did have a part in “The
Royal Tenenbaums” that was written for Jason, but it got cut out. He played a
boy who lived across the street from them.
MTV: That was cut out in the screenwriting
stage?
Anderson: Yeah. But there’s a bird in the
movie that’s named after his character. He was going to play Mordecai. He was
the son of a diplomat and had escaped from his school.
In another interview, Schwartzman expanded. “There was a moment when I was going to be in ‘The Royal Tenenbaums.’ I was going to play Morki, I’d of worn a white-suit and drank chocolate milk; I was some kind of child prodigy or something. There were too many parts in the movie though, so mine was taken out – but they named the bird after me in the movie! [Mordecai].” (though the interviewer incorrectly transcribes the name as ‘Morki’)
Watch: The Origins Of Mordecai
This post was originally taken from a Wes Anderson “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” piece we did but we thought it needed fleshing-out and it deserved to be its own post.