David Schwimmer Admits Turning Down Men in Black Role Was 'Brutal Decision': 'You Have to Follow Your Gut'

David Schwimmer gets candid about deciding against taking a Men in black role.

During the performance at Origin from Cush Jumbo podcast, the actor-director recalled to host Cush Jumbo that he was offered one of the lead roles in 1997. Men in black exactly at the same time he planned to direct his first film, in 1998 Since you’re gone.

“So it was a brutal decision,” Schwimmer recalled, explaining that the opportunity came just after he finished shooting the 1996 film. Pallbearer with Gwyneth Paltrow, one of his first major roles outside Friends.

There were great expectations from that which did not come true, he said with a laugh. “It was kind of a bombshell. But there were high expectations and the studio, which was Miramax, wanted to sign me into a three-film deal for a fixed price and I said I’d do it if I directed my first film.”

Schwimmer said that after months of negotiations, he and Miramax agreed to star in three additional films for the studio and to direct actors from their own theater company.

“All my best friends in the world in my theater company quit their jobs so they could be in this movie over the summer, which was supposed to be shot for six weeks in Chicago,” he recalled.

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Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black 3.

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Schwimmer’s offer to act Men in blackThe sci-fi action blockbuster starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones came out just as he was wrapping up pre-production for Since you’re gone.

“It was a direct conflict with – this was my summer window from FriendsI had a four month break, and Men in black intended to film exactly when I intended to direct this film with my company.”

“Of course it was an amazing opportunity,” he said Little death added the actor. “I mean, you’ve got to follow your gut, you’ve got to follow your heart. And look, I mean, I’m really aware — whatever, 20 years later, maybe more — that would make me, I think, a movie star. If you look at the success of that movie and that franchise, I would — my career might have taken a completely different path.”

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David Schwimmer. Ian West/PA Images via Getty

Although Schwimmer admitted on the podcast that he wasn’t sure “if I made the right choice,” he noted that his friends in the theater company (the actor co-founded Chicago’s Lookingglass Theater Company in the ’90s) may never have forgiven him for jumping on the bandwagon. Since you’re gone

“My theater company and that relationship with all those people probably would have ended. I don’t think it would have recovered,” he said. “I mean, those people quit their jobs to make that movie.”

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Source: HIS Education