Why Will Smith turned down 'Django Unchained'

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Upon first announcing 'Django Unchained', it was a fairly well-traveled rumor that Quentin Tarantino wanted Will Smith for the title role in his western revenge-fantasy.

However, Smith told Entertainment Weekly that while the role was certainly on the table, he ultimately turned it down due to creative differences: namely, that he wouldn't have been the lead.

The Academy Award-nominated actor argued that despite having the title role of slave-turned-vigilante Django, the character would have been secondary to the bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz. The irony, of course, is that Waltz would go on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role, being campaigned as a supporting actor while eventual star Jamie Foxx was campaigned as the lead. However, in the initial version of the film with which Smith was involved, the actor felt that Django was marginalized in the story.

“Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead!” says the star of the upcoming summer sci-fi flick After Earth (alongside son Jaden Smith). Smith says that before he departed the project, he pleaded with writer/director Tarantino to give Django a more substantial role in the story. “I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!’”

Smith's departure cleared the path for Jamie Foxx to step into the role, which resulted in Foxx receiving some of his best reviews in years.

However, Smith has no hard feelings about the project. In fact, he was a pretty huge fan of the final product. “I thought it was brilliant,” he says. “Just not for me.”

Via: Entertainment Weekly