Nicolas Cage Apparently Hates Seth Rogen
Nic Cage has beef with Seth Rogen, according to Far Out, and it’s all thanks to… a failed audition for The Green Hornet?
Cage was up for the villain role in Rogen’s 2011 sorta-superhero film. “The Green Hornet was something I wanted to do,” Cage said. “I think Michel Gondry is very talented, and I had hoped it would work. But I think Seth Rogen and Michel had a different direction for the character totally than the way I wanted to go.”
Surprise, surprise — the way that Cage wanted to go was completely bizarre. “I wasn’t interested in just being a straight-up bad guy who was killing people willy-nilly,” he said. “I had to have some humanity and try to give it something where you could understand why the character was the way he was.”
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Cage’s plan to make bad guy Benjamin Chudnofsky more human was to give him a Jamaican accent. Wait, what now? Rogen, understandably, was hesitant to have Cage turn a guy named Chudnofsy into “a white Bahamian” who would take down the Green Hornet via a “voodoo ritual.”
But Cage insisted on talking about the part in person. Fair enough. Rogen and his Green Hornet team showed up at Cage’s place to hear him out. “Within 60 seconds, we were all seated in the living room as he stood in front of us, reciting a monologue in a Jamaican accent. We were all just like, ‘What’s happening?’ A monologue, I should add, that was not in the script — nor did it have anything to do with the script. At which point I was like, I don’t think he’s read the script!” Rogen remembered. “There was no indication he had any idea what film we were trying to make, other than it was called The Green Hornet and there was a villain in it.”
Needless to say, Cage didn’t get the role. Hey, it happens. But losing a part wasn’t what caused the rift between Rogen and Cage. That happened a few years later when former Rogen pal James Franco showed up in Spring Breakers speaking in a ludicrous accent.
Cage was furious at Rogen: “Did you tell James about that meeting we had? The Jamaican meeting?”
“He was like, ‘Because that guy in Spring Breakers, was that based on the character I did for you guys?’” Rogen remembered. “I was like, ‘No, absolutely not, I think it was actually based on a Florida rapper.’ He very clearly didn’t believe me.”
Listening to Franco’s Spring Breakers character, it’s easy to side with Rogen. Franco’s lazy drawl, sprinkled with y’all’s, is definitely weird but doesn’t sound remotely Jamaican. The actor confirmed to GQ that he based the character on “this local Florida rapper named Dangeruss. He’s fairly unknown, but he was down there in the place, living the life, and he became the biggest model for me.”
Why did Rogen go public with Cage’s angry rant? “I mean, he already doesn’t like me,” Rogen said. “So he’ll continue not to like me!”
