Ricky Gervais Almost Played Simon Pegg's Character In The Mission: Impossible Franchise
For film geeks, no one can ever replace actor Simon Pegg, but Ricky Gervais almost did. After the undeniable success of John Woo's pompous slow-motion action opera "Mission: Impossible II," Paramount Pictures wanted to keep the sequel machine rolling but star Tom Cruise struggled to find the right director and story for a third entry. From 2002 to 2004, David Fincher and Joe Carnahan were both attached to direct, and Hollywood notables such as Scarlett Johansson, Carrie Anne-Moss, and Kenneth Branagh were also in serious talks to co-star alongside Cruise.
In one of those iterations, Gervais was reportedly set to play CIA technician Benji Dunn in "Mission: Impossible III" after a chance meeting with Cruise at the Golden Globe awards. "I know the director well and he said, 'Do you want a part?'" Gervais told the Daily Mirror (via UPI). "I just replied, 'Yeah, that will be great.'" At the time, Gervais was following up the UK version of "The Office" with "Extras," a surprisingly touching series about a struggling actor that regularly featured A-list talent in often hilarious cameos. Cruise never wound up making an appearance in "Extras," and Gervais eventually wound up exiting the project due to a scheduling conflict with Christopher Guest's scathing critique of Hollywood's awards season, "For Your Consideration."
Once Gervais dropped out to appear in "For Your Consideration" alongside one of his comedy idols, it left the door open for Pegg to step in to become a major part of the franchise over the next 20 years.
Nerd Do Well
Despite multiple starts and stops during pre-production, things finally started falling into place after Tom Cruise binge-watched J.J. Abrams' ABC spy drama series "Alias" starring Jennifer Garner (per The Hollywood Reporter). Along with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Abrams wanted to humanize Ethan Hunt after John Woo's over-the-top take on the character, giving him a suburban life outside the spy world and a fiancee, Julia (Michelle Monaghan).
Abrams already had a relationship with Ricky Gervais, who had appeared in the 2004 "Alias" episode "Facade." When Gervais left "Mission: Impossible III" in order to star in "For Your Consideration," Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright had only just made a huge splash with their instant-classic zombie comedy, "Shaun of the Dead." Abrams was a massive fan of the movie and Pegg suddenly found himself at the top of the list to play Benji.
Initially, Pegg didn't really have much of a desire to go into big-budget filmmaking after having complete creative control on his early projects with Wright. In a now-hilarious aside during an interview asking Pegg and Wright if they had plans to leave the UK for Hollywood, Pegg quipped, "It's not like we're going to go away and do, I don't know ... 'Mission: Impossible III.'"
Pegg eventually accepted the role that would catapult his acting career into franchise filmmaking with the "Mission Impossible" films, "Star Trek," and "Star Wars." But his big break fortunately never made him look like a Hollywood sell-out. "So it was a huge irony that I'd said, 'I'm not going to go off and do this," he told The Guardian. "But then, at that time, there was this attitude that anyone who went off to Hollywood was betraying their roots in some sense or selling out. It's not like you cross some misty bridge at night and never come home again."