Nic Cage Responds To Accusation That He Tried To Play A White Jamaican With A Questionable Accent
Seth Rogen has told a bizarre story about Nic Cage. Now, Cage has replied with an official statement on the matter.
This article is more than 2 years old
Seth Rogen is currently sharing stories from his life as he does press tours for his new book, Yearbook. Of course, much of the actor’s life has been spent in Hollywood. His recent stories include things like embarrassing run-ins with Beyoncé’s bodyguard and that time he auditioned for 8 Mile. However, one of the funniest and most bizarre stories he has shared stars Nic Cage. Rogen told this story a couple of months ago to GQ, but greatly elaborated on the tale more recently for The Howard Stern Show. Rogen’s recollections have Cage desperately wanting to play a white villain with a heavy Jamaican accent and tattooed on hair for The Green Hornet. He didn’t get the part. Later, Cage accuses Seth Rogen of giving the character idea to James Franco for Spring Breakers. Now, Cage has decided to publicly respond to the story.
After Entertainment Weekly ran an article about Seth Rogen’s story, a representative for Nic Cage contacted the outlet with a short and simple statement. He said, “I like Seth. He’s a funny guy and clearly a good storyteller. I wish him luck with his book.”
Nic Cage sounds particularly intense in the part of the story where he accuses Rogen of giving the character idea to James Franco for Spring Breakers. It makes him sound like he really wanted to be in The Green Hornet and also like he’s fairly defensive. Coming to Entertainment Weekly with such a short statement in response was probably a smart PR move. It doesn’t make him sound too defensive. It makes it sound like he has some good humor about Seth Rogen’s telling of events. By saying Rogen is “clearly a good storyteller”, he manages to also indicate in one very brief statement that were Cage to tell how all of this went down, he would tell the story differently.
This indicates there’s more to the story and casts some doubt on the intensity of Rogen’s telling, without doing something as uncomfortable as calling Rogen a liar or looking defensive. Overall, it seems like the smoothest public response Nic Cage could have given.
Ultimately, Nic Cage never appeared in The Green Hornet. The role went to Christoph Waltz. According to Seth Rogen’s retelling of events, the villain Cage had created didn’t have much at all to do with the story of The Green Hornet and Rogen believed Cage hadn’t read the script. The character was more surrounding the idea of creating a fun villain he could play in a superhero movie than about the actual story. This makes sense, considering that a few years later, Rogen says that Cage asked for a meeting where he then asked Seth Rogen if he told James Franco about the character idea. According to Rogen, Cage felt that Franco’s character was too much like the one Cage had pitched. The photo below shows Franco’s Spring Breakers character.
Considering that The Green Hornet didn’t perform particularly well, and Spring Breakers wasn’t something to write home about, it’s hard to imagine Nic Cage believes he really missed out on this one. Although, if he did believe his character idea was stolen, as weird as that idea was, it’s understandable that he may still be irritated about it, especially with Seth Rogen recounting the story to multiple outlets all these years later.
