David Schwimmer is not ‘a movie star’ thanks to this ‘brutal decision’ he made
nypost.com“Friends” alum, 57, said on Tuesday’s episode of the “Origins With Cush Jumbo” podcast that he turned down a role in 1997’s “Men in Black,” which caused him to never reach “movie star” status. “That was a brutal decision,” Schwimmer recalled. “I had just finished filming ‘The Pallbearer,’ my first film with Gwyneth Paltrow, and there were high expectations of that which didn’t come true.
It was kind of a bomb.”Schwimmer explained that Miramax had “high expectations” of him at the time, so the studio ended up locking him into a deal where he could direct his entire Lookingglass Theatre Company in a movie.“We found this amazing script and we were developing it,” he said. “We started preproduction.
All my best friends in the world in my theater company quit their jobs so they could be in this film over the summer, which was going to be a six-week shoot in Chicago.”However, the filming schedule for Schwimmer’s directorial debut, 1998’s “Since You’ve Been Gone,” conflicted with the production of “Men in Black,” forcing the actor to choose between the two projects.“My summer window from ‘Friends’ was four months.
I had a four-month hiatus and ‘Men in Black’ was going to shoot exactly when I was going to direct this film with my company.
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