Who wouldn’t want to work with Jennifer Lawrence? Even Quentin Tarantino was hoping to work with her on his latest movie, but it was not to be.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tarantino said that he is a “huge Jennifer Lawrence fan” and thought about casting her in the only female role in The Hateful Eight. However, the role went to Jennifer Jason Leigh instead.
As a student of film, Tarantino compared Lawrence’s relationship with Joy director David O. Russell to Bette Davis’ relationship with director William Wyler. So even though Lawrence met with Tarantino, he said he knew there was very little chance that she would do The Hateful Eight.
“She was just doing me a courtesy to see me, I think,” Tarantino told the magazine. “She was doing Joy. She had to do all this publicity on the Hunger Games movies. There was just no f***ing way in the world that she was available. Having said that, I’m glad I didn’t cast somebody that young. I think I absolutely positively made the right choice, as far as the ages of the characters.”
Leigh’s character is Daisy Domergue, a fugitive who arrives at an inn with Kurt Russell’s character. It was one of only two roles in Tarantino’s script that he wrote without immediately knowing who was going to play it.
You can see The Hateful Eight on Christmas Day if you are lucky enough to live near a theater that installed a film project to show the 70mm Roadshow version. The film, which had to deal with a leak this week, opens wide on Dec. 31.
Joy also opens tomorrow.