Mel Gibson Says Martin Scorsese Wanted to Cast Him as Jesus in ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’
Mel Gibson was in no way tempted to star as Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” despite the auteur wanting to cast him.
Gibson said during the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that Scorsese approached him while they were staying at the same hotel in London to lead “The Last Temptation of Christ.” The 1988 film eventually was made starring Willem Dafoe instead.
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“Interestingly enough, I was in a hotel room in the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead from it. I ate a bad oyster in London and I was dying in a hotel room and I couldn’t even leave. It was the worst,” Gibson recalled. “While I was there, Scorsese calls the room and says, ‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’ I go and I talk to Martin and he’s in his room and all the windows, the screens, he’s drawn on. He’s got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room. He’s talking to me about the ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ and he wants me to play Jesus and I said, ‘Wow. I’m not doing that.'”
Gibson credited Dafoe for his turn, though, saying “He did something that I think nobody else did and I think he pulled it off because I totally believed it. He emptied himself out. He invited something else in. He meditated and let Christ in.”
Gibson, who most recently is directing “Flight Risk,” reflected on just how much the industry has changed since he made his own Christ-centric epic, “The Passion Of The Christ,” in 2004.
“We’re living in a different time now in the film world. I mean, everything is upside down. You have to compete in a medium where you have less time, less money. ‘Do it fast, do it now.’ It’s like, ‘Wow. Can I do that?'” Gibson said. “I always had the luxury of big budgets and 3,000 people on horses and all that kind of stuff. I was able to take my time. But I had 22 days [with ‘Flight Risk’] and here, you’ve got to tell the story in 22 days so I felt the challenge of doing that. I just want people to have a nice little ride, a fun ride in entertainment.”
Gibson will, however, return to his “more profound” work with a “Passion Of The Christ” sequel centered on the Resurrection biblical story. The film will aptly be titled “The Resurrection Of The Christ,” and was written by Gibson, his brother, and Randall Wallace (“Braveheart”) across seven years.
“I have to change my entire life to do it,” Gibson said of directing the feature, slated to go into production in 2026. “It’s like preparing for a fight. You have to be fit for the fight. You have to spiritually prepare yourself for that, and that’s going to take some sacrifice.”
He continued, “There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it. My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff, and I think in order to really tell the story properly, you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go to hell. You need to go to Sheol.”
He teased that the film will be “very ambitious” and chart “the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.”
“It’s about finding the way in that’s not cheesy or too obvious,” Gibson said. “I think I have ideas about how to do that and how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to require a lot of planning and I’m not wholly sure I can pull it off to tell you the truth, it’s super ambitious. But I’ll take a crack at it because that’s what you got to do, right, walk up to the plate, right?”
The “Passion Of The Christ” lead star Jim Caviezel will be recast, though, with a different actor playing Jesus.
Watch Gibson’s full interview with Rogan below.
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