Here's Why Puff Daddy Didn't End Up as a Voice in 'Sausage Party'
Sausage Party star Seth Rogen was able to recruit a deep pool of talent to voice grocery items in the R-rated, animated talking-hot-dog adventure, including Oscar nominees James Franco, Salma Hayek, Edward Norton, and Jonah Hill. The actor, who also co-wrote and produced the film, told Yahoo Movies that the ensemble was easily persuaded to join in the raunchy fun, despite some very lewd subject matter. This is a film where food things drink, smoke weed, fornicate, and ultimately, wage war against their human predators.
There was one notable name who got away, though: music mogul Sean Combs (a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. P. Diddy), who was offered the role of the voice of a bottle of Courvoisier. According to Rogen, who dropped by Yahoo Studios with costar Michael Cera this week, Combs loved the script, but esd picturing something different. (Watch the video above.)
“We had a call with him,” Rogen said. “He was like, ‘I read this. It was so funny. I loved it.’ And then he was like, 'So how are we going film it? What are the suits going look like? Are the aisles going be huge so we look little?’ And it was clear he thought it was a live-action movie.
Related: Theater Apologizes for Screening R-Rated 'Sausage Party’ Ahead of 'Finding Dory’
"We told him it wasn’t, and you could literally hear his interest plummet through the floor. And for some weird reason, the version of the movie where he pictured himself in a sweaty Courvoisier bottle for 12 hours a day was far more desirable to him than the version that just required him to step into a recording booth for, like, 45 minutes.”
Rogen added that Combs (who showed impressive comedic chops opposite Hill in 2010’s Get Him to the Greek) never officially passed on the role. But he and his fellow scribes Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter, and Ariel Shaffir wrote the cognac out of the script “largely because of Puff Daddy’s disappointed reaction.” (Reached through his reps by Yahoo, Combs had no comment.)
Sausage Party opens Aug. 12. Watch the red-band trailer below: