Drax actor Dave Bautista says he offered to play a zombie for free on The Walking Dead but was turned down. After first gaining notoriety as a professional wrestler in the WWE, Bautista in 2006 kicked off his movie career with an uncredited cameo as (what else) a wrestler in the comedy Relative Strangers.
After that modest onscreen debut Bautista went on to develop his chops as an action hero, appearing in low-budget movies with titles like House of the Rising Sun and Man With the Iron Fists. Then in 2014 he received his big break when he landed the role of Drax the Destroyer in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a part he would reprise in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and a pair of Avengers films. After breaking through as Drax, Bautista expanded his resume with appearances in movies like Spectre and Blade Runner 2049 as well as starring roles in comedic action vehicles like Stuber and My Spy. Next up for Bautista is a role in Zack Snyder’s highly anticipated zombie film Army of the Dead, which is set to hit Netflix in 2021.
Indeed it seems playing in the zombie sandbox is something Bautista has dreamed about for a long time. Speaking to Empire about his role in Army of the Dead, the actor revealed that he was once so eager to appear on AMC’s long-running zombie drama The Walking Dead he even offered to work on the show for free but was turned down because of his pro wrestler physique. Bautista said, “I tried to get on Walking Dead for years. I said I would come and play a zombie for free, but they said, ‘You’re too big!’”
In fact the average zombie performer on The Walking Dead is much smaller and thinner than Bautista, which makes sense when one considers that zombies are supposed to be reanimated corpses in various states of decay. The thought of giant Bautista shambling around in zombie makeup may indeed be somewhat amusing, but probably not very believable in terms of the way walkers are normally presented on the show.
Thankfully for Bautista he now gets to live out his zombie movie dreams not by playing one of the undead but by portraying a living human character, specifically a mercenary leading a group of criminals attempting to heist a Las Vegas casino during a zombie outbreak. It remains to be seen if Snyder’s zombie/heist mashup Army of the Dead goes over with audiences in an era of zombie fatigue, but it sounds like Bautista was happy just to be in the movie as he’s obviously a huge fan of the lurching undead and particularly The Walking Dead.
Source: Empire