Hugh Jackman reveals he was offered a role in Cats, and explains why he turned it down. Directed by Oscar-winner Tom Hooper, 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s astonishingly popular stage musical crashed and burned at the box office, becoming an object of wide ridicule (and even being mocked by people who were in it, like James Corden and Rebel Wilson).
But of course, Cats was already being made fun of long before it was released thanks to an initial trailer revealing the movie’s bizarre and unnerving visual effects. Meant to transform the movie’s performers into humanoid felines, those effects didn’t dazzle so much as horrify, and reportedly the movie’s producers picked up on this early audience reaction and scrambled to improve those troublesome effects. Infamously, much of the later VFX work was done to fix an unintended effect that made it appear the cats had too-realistic buttholes. Stories of butthole erasing led to an actual legend claiming there exists an alternate butthole cut of the movie (this alternate cut has yet to see the light of day).
The failure of Cats has indeed led to a lot of fall-out for a lot of people, but one person who missed out on the backlash is Jackman, who revealed in a recent interview with The Daily Beast that he was indeed up for a role in the musical but had to decline the opportunity. As Jackman explained, “You know, Tom rang me early on because we did Les Mis together, and there were a couple of options there based on availability and time, and I really… yeah, I just wasn’t available at the time.”
When asked if he felt relieved to have missed out on appearing in Cats, Jackman gave a gentlemanly and professional response, saying “I don’t want to be in the business of bashing people.” Jackman of course has a long-standing connection with Cats director Hooper, having played the character of Jean Valjean in Hooper’s film adaptation of Les Miserables (a film that itself came in for its fair share of criticism, though most appreciated Jackman’s own performance).
By all indications, Jackman would have been happy to work with Hooper again in Cats had his schedule allowed. What exact role he would’ve played is not revealed, but it’s easy to imagine him as Macavity in place of Idris Elba, or as Rum Rum Tugger in place of Jason Derulo. At any rate, Jackman simply was not able to appear in Cats, and though he clearly isn’t one to bash a movie – especially one directed by his old friend Hooper – he must in truth be relieved that he didn’t end up as one of the many performers who now feel embarrassed to have been part of the disaster that is Cats.
Source: The Daily Beast