Though Christoph Waltz is a household name amongst film fans in 2021, back before 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds” was released, not many Americans knew who he was. That said, after watching that Quentin Tarantino film and seeing Waltz steal every scene he was in, Waltz became a sensation and won a Best Actor Academy Award for his efforts. However, before he found Waltz for the role of Hans Landa in “Inglourious Basterds,” Tarantino was convinced he might have to put the movie on the shelf because he wasn’t sure there was an actor that could play the part.
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Quentin Tarantino talked about the quest to find the perfect Hans Landa while appearing on a recent episode of The Moment podcast with writer/director Brian Koppelman (“Billions“). And the filmmaker doesn’t mince words about his issues finding the right actor for the most pivotal role in “Inglourious Basterds”
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It’s been known that Leonardo DiCaprio spoke to Tarantino early on about the film, but the filmmaker politely told him he was wrong for the role and the actor had to be absolutely fluent in French, German, and Italian (which Waltz was and still is). Tarantino also admitted that other actors from the movie auditioned for the role and, while it’s not said in this interview, he clearly means Michael Fassbender, who does speak German and once admitted to auditioning for the role and “really running after that part.“
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Anyhow, Tarantino remembers calling something of an emergency phone call meeting with his producer Lawrence Bender, his casting director and his casting agent that went something like this:
“Look, guys, we’re not finding him and I’m not so confident we’re going to find him. I don’t want to make the movie if we can’t make the perfect Landa,” Tarantino said. “Now, this isn’t as cavalier as it sounds. It’s a WWII movie, WWII isn’t going anywhere, so we can just wrap up our box and put it away and three years from now… [we could do it]. I’m not gonna throw it away, but it’s a WWII movie and we could do it three years from now and it’ll be a different group of actors and maybe we’ll have better luck.”
The filmmaker added that the role was possibly not only the best part of the film, but the character might actually be better than the actual film.
“I think Landa was more of a masterpiece than the movie!” Tarantino exclaimed, explaining that he thought that character was the best part of the movie which is why he had the internal fortitude to possibly walk away from the movie. “[Not make the movie] rather than cast a Landa that’s not right? Hell yeah,” he said. “I [was preparing] the emotional deadness. I’ve got til Thursday to commit to cutting the limb off completely and not think twice about it.”
So Tarantino makes this ultimatum, and with a deadline approaching, Bender decides to use the remaining week of casting to only see actors reading for Landa instead of multiple roles and during that down-to-the-wire time they found Christoph Waltz.
“As you can imagine, everyone in the cast was asking, ‘Who’s Landa?’ ‘What’s going on with Landa?’ And the only ones who knew who [Waltz] was were the German [actors],” he explained.
Interestingly enough because none of the more famous actors knew who Waltz was, Tarantino told the actor to hold back in the table read with the rest of the cast, hold his cards close to the vest and lose any “competitions” that might come up. He wanted the unknown Waltz to take them all by surprise on the day.
“I want you to hold a lot back,” he explained. “I don’t want to them to think they’re getting a glimpse of who you’re really going to be. So, on a scale of one to ten, gimme six. Be good enough, just good enough. If you get into a competition with anyone [at the table read], I want you to lose. I don’t want them to know what you have and I don’t want them to have a handle on Landa… I don’t want Diane Kruger, I don’t want Brad [Pitt] to know your gun-slinging abilities.”
Waltz’s response? “OK, I appreciate that, but I need to rehearse all those scenes so I will do it with you.” Boom, Tarantino says that was fine. In fact, he said Bender, Tarantino’s longtime producer who didn’t know the game plan, but knew how good Waltz was said, “It’s kind of an off-day for Christoph, huh?”
And the rest, as they say, is history. “Inglourious Basterds” would go on to be a massive hit at the box office and with critics, earning Waltz the first of his two Oscar wins in a Tarantino Film. You can hear the full discussion below: