Anthony LaPaglia tells News.Com.Au that he had to ditch his role in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” in favour of the Julian Assange-themed Australian TV movie “Underground”.
LaPaglia was to play a small role in Tarantino’s western that would’ve been shot in just one day, compared to a major multi-week role in the telemovie about the infamous Wikileaks founder. However with said day of ‘Django’ filming continually pushed back, he had to make a choice.
“For me to pull out of ‘Underground’ would have hurt it. They’d raised the money partially on me and Rachel Griffiths (being involved). They were about to start shooting and it would have created mayhem and may have shut the film down. The people at Django, their attitude more or less was, ‘Just dump the other film’, but I couldn’t do it out of respect to (director) Rob Connolly, out of respect to the material, out of respect to the commitment I’d made” says LaPaglia.
LaPaglia had gone as far as to rehearse his role with Tarantino and Foxxm but the lack of organisation didn’t help. “The (Django) production was just out of control, over-budget it was everywhere. I had to formally withdraw. They recast it and they still haven’t shot anything. I could have said nothing and just hung out I could be there shooting it now” says the actor.
He adds that he was still happy to do what he could – “I’m just happy I got it. I had as much fun being a part of the film, probably more fun, than even shooting it. Quentin is brilliant and I love him. That’s just the way it goes.”
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