Josh Gad claims he was rejected from Avatar role for being ‘overweight’
Josh Gad has revealed he missed out on the million-dollar opportunity to be in Avatar due to looking like ‘a tall, overweight Smurf’ in character.
The Beauty and the Beast actor revealed the anecdote in his new memoir, In Gad We Trust, published January 14th.
Gad said that he missed out on a key role in the highest-grossing movie of all time due to his physique not matching what director James Cameron had in mind for the Na’vi people.
The 43-year-old reminisced about the incident in his memoir, recalling the excitement of his callback: ‘I put myself on tape and shortly thereafter got a call that Cameron wanted to fly me to Los Angeles for a final callback at his Lightstorm production offices.’
However, after getting suited up to play Jake Sully’s best friend and translator, he did not digitalise as well as Cameron imagined.
‘I apparently did not get (the role) because, while James Cameron was said to be thrilled with my audition, when I was turned into a digital Avatar I supposedly looked like a tall, overweight Smurf.’
Sam Worthington’s character Jake Sully is the main character in the sci-fi phenomenon, meaning it would have been an enormous part for Gad to snag.
The role was eventually given to actor Joel David Moore, who plays Norm Spellman in Avatar, a close confidant to Jake Sully and an expert on the Na’vi language, who was likely a renamed version of the character Gad auditioned for.
Avatar came December 18, 2009 and quickly became a global phenomenon and the highest-grossing film of all time.
The movie has raked in $2.9billion (£2.38b) worldwide to date. The sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, currently sits in third place with a lifetime gross of $2.3b (£1.89b). So to say that Gad missed out on a major payday would be a bit of an understatement.
Still, not landing the role meant Gad was free to voice Olaf in the award-winning animated movie Frozen.
He also shared some fascinating details about the iconic snowman in his new memoir.
He revealed that the well-loved Disney character was actually scripted to die in Frozen 2.
Eventually, the death cut because it was deemed too ‘brutal and traumatising’ for children and he and writer-director Jennifer Lee could not get through the script without sobbing.
Gad’s Olaf the snowman has become one of the best-loved animated characters of all time and the actor is expected to reprise the role in the third and fourth films in the franchise.
He previously told host David Letterman about voicing Olaf in 2015, saying: ‘I was a part of Frozen… a big part of Frozen, I played Olaf. It was a blast and they really let me define it… My daughter, who’s about 4 years old, sort of grew up with these [Disney] movies, so when I did Frozen, it was really exciting. Now, she’s completely over it. She really is.’
While its unknown exactly how much Gad has earned for playing Olaf he went on to say: ‘The thing made a couple of billion and I made a couple of thousand.’
Letterman then asked whether he was joking, to which Gad responded: ‘No, they actually paid me really well’ before shaking his head to suggest that he was lying, earning a laugh.
‘I love you Disney, I really do…’ he added, before correcting himself again: ‘No, they paid me great.’
Josh Gad claims he was rejected from Avatar role for being ‘overweight’