In his new memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Brian Cox says that he turned down the role of Robert Baratheon in Game of Thrones because the “money was not all that great” and he would’ve died early on. He also slams Johnny Depp as “overblown” and “overrated.”
“I’m often asked if I was offered a role in ‘Game of Thrones’ — reason being that every other bugger was — and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season,” Cox writes in the memoir. “I know very little about ‘Game of Thrones’ so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to Google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.”
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As for other parts Cox has turned down, he recalls being offered the role of Governor Weatherby Swann in the Pirates franchise. The part eventually went to Jonathan Pryce, who later starred in Game of Thrones.
“I turned my nose up at the part of the Governor in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean franchise,’ a role that was eventually played by Jonathan Pryce,” Cox says, before criticizing the franchise.
“Another thing with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ is that it’s very much the ‘Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow’ show, and Depp, personable though I’m sure he is, is so overblown, so overrated,” Cox adds. “I mean, ‘Edward Scissorhands.’ Let’s face it, if you come on with hands like that and pale, scarred-face make-up, you don’t have to do anything. And he didn’t. And subsequently, he’s done even less. But people love him. Or they did love him. They don’t love him so much these days, of course.”
Putting the Rabbit in the Hat is out on January 18th.
[Via]