Quentin Tarantino has a stable of familiar actors he works with, but for his latest film, “Django Unchained,” the director switched it up, casting two actors he’s never worked with before for prominent roles: Jamie Foxx as the lead and Leonardo DiCaprio as the villain (arguably there are lots of new faces including Kerry Washington, Don Johnson and more).
Tarantino was on Charlie Rose recently and the talk show host asked about how he came to work with DiCaprio and then segued into another question: he was suprised that Tarantino’s never worked with actor Johnny Depp, who like DiCaprio, is one of the biggest name actors in the world. Maybe not so surprisingly, Tarantino said he and Depp have discussed working together in the past and hope to do so some time in the future.
“We would love to work together. We’ve talked about it for years,” Tarantino said of Depp. “Not that we get together and talk about it for years, but from time to time. We’re obviously fans of each other. It just needs to be the right character. I just need to write the right character that I think Johnny would be the right guy to do it with. And if he agrees, then we’ll do it. And then it’ll be magical. I haven’t written the perfect character for Johnny Depp as of yet. Maybe someday I will, maybe someday I won’t. We’ll see.”
When asked about who else is on his to-work-with wishlist, Tarantino said Meryl Streep and Michael Caine. Wouldn’t that be something to see Streep in a QT film?
Interestingly enough, much like we assumed when we first read the “Django Unchained” script, Tarantino says he originally envisioned a much older Calvin Candie character (the villain that Leonard DiCaprio plays). The filmmaker said he had an actor in mind, but didn’t name him, but it turns out he was too old in the end. “It was supposed to be for an older guy,” Tarantino said about writing the Candie role. “I kind of had somebody in mind when I was writing it, but me being me, I forget that the last time I saw them was in 1991 and it’s actually been twenty years since then. [So] I had a rude awakening. He’s kind of a really old man and not really what I was thinking about.”
The clip in question with Tarantino discussing Johnny Depp is below (though the first part is slightly cut off). The entire interview is the final clip at the bottom. “Django Unchained” is in theaters now. You can read three of our distinctly different reviews here.