Quentin Tarantino has admitted that he doesn’t want the lead role of his new film, The Movie Critic, to be played by a British actor.
In a new interview with Deadline, the Pulp Fiction director expressed the view that too many American characters are being portrayed by UK stars, and that “nobody is acting in their own voice”.
Asked if a British actor could potentially be cast as the film’s lead, he outright replied: “No. The truth of the matter is, yes, obviously, a Brit could pull it off, but I don’t want to cast a Brit. Obviously, nothing against the Brits, but we’re living in a really weird time now.”
He continued: “I think when people look back on this era of cinema, and it’s just all these British actors pretending to be Americans and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it’s like phantoms. Nobody is acting in their own voice. We just happen to be in an era of really, really good British actors who, for the most part, can pull it off.”
Tarantino stressed that he has nothing against British actors, adding: “By the way, I’m not being xenophobic. The Brits would have a hell of a lot more problems if a bunch of American actors came over there with their Dick Van Dyke [Mary Poppins] accents playing famous Brits. They don’t want to see that shit.”
In the same interview, the director revealed that The Movie Critic — which he claims will be his last-ever film — will be about a “porno rag” journalist.
Tarantino said that the film would be set in 1977 Southern California, and based on a real-life movie critic for a pornographic magazine, which the director used to read when he was growing up and working as a vending machine re-stocker.
“All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page,” Tarantino recalled of reading the magazine as a teenager.
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries.”
He added: “But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late 30s. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.”
On potential casting options, Tarantino said that he is looking for an American in his mid-30s, adding that it will be someone he has not yet worked with.
Earlier this week, Tarantino killed off Rick Dalton, the fictional character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
