There are tons of fascinating “what if?” stories around Hollywood. What if Quentin Tarantino had made a “Silver Surfer” film? Or what if Guillermo del Toro had made “Doctor Strange” or the third “Harry Potter” or a multitude of other unrealized projects by the famous director? There’s always at least one of these stories you can’t help but wonder, what if things had gone differently? The latest one involves Tarantino, Laurence Fishburne and the role of Jules Winnfield in “Pulp Fiction.”
It is commonly known that Paul Calderon, who has another minor role in the film, was at one point up for the role, before Samuel L. Jackson ultimately got cast as Jules (there’s a fun casting face-off battle challenge story in here as well). But during an appearance of The Ringer’s “The Rewatchables” podcast, Tarantino revealed that his number 1 choice was actually Laurence Fishburne, who was fresh off “King of New York” and “Boyz n the Hood” when Tarantino was writing the script for the movie. As Tarantino tells it, he offered Fishburne the role but he turned it down at the suggestion of his reps, who told him to pass on the role in order not to hurt his chances at getting a leading role. As Tarantino said “[Fishburne] turns it down, and talks to me about it though. And he says, ‘Look, I wanna do it, all right? But look, I’m paying these people, so you know, if I’m paying them, I ought to listen to them.’”
The story doesn’t end there, however. After turning down “Pulp Fiction” due to the size of his part, he was up for the co-starring part in “Die Hard With A Vengeance” alongside Bruce Willis, that was, according to Tarantino, written for Fishburne. But after Fishburne asked for too much money, Andy Vajna (who produced “Die Hard”) went to the premiere of “Pulp Fiction” at Cannes to support Willis, only he also returned from France having cast Samuel L. Jackson instead of Fishburne. This resulted in Fishburne suing Cinergi, the production company behind “Die Hard With A Vengeance” for “breaking a verbal promise” to give him the role of Zeus. And as Tarantino tells it, “the rest is history.”
You can listen to the episode below plus a specific excerpt from the story in question: