Harrison Ford is best known for two film roles: Han Solo in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. These days you can’t imagine both roles without the actor. But Indiana Jones was actually supposed to be played by someone else, who even got the role – but an iconic series got in the way.
Who should play Indiana Jones? Raiders of the Lost Ark was released in 1981. The adventure film was directed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas worked on the screenplay. The film became a major franchise that has had 4 sequels to date, the last one not until 2023.
Harrison Ford embodies Indiana Jones in all parts of the series. But actually someone else was supposed to play the iconic treasure hunter and there were even screen tests for him: Tom Selleck. But he couldn’t take part because a series came up.
Ford will still embody the adventurer in 2023:
“Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny” with Harrison Ford – Trailer (German)
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I didn’t turn it down, I earned the role
What does Tom Selleck say about this? In 2020, Tom Selleck was a guest on the Racheal Ray Show (via YouTube). There he is asked by Racheal Ray if there was a role in his career that he missed. A film immediately comes to Selleck’s mind. It was Raiders of the Lost Ark. He says the following about this:
God, with Wikipedia and all that stuff, there are all sorts of things that aren’t true. I didn’t reject it. I earned the role. I did a screen test. And Steven Spielberg and George Lucas said, “You’ve got the part.”
Nowadays you can even see a clip of the screen test on YouTube:
Then why couldn’t he play the role? In the interview, the actor says that after he got the role, he alerted Lucas and Spielberg about a pilot episode of a series he was supposed to film. But the two of them probably didn’t think that this would be a problem.
He shot the series Magnum for CBS. The series ran between 1980 and 1988. The production work would have overlapped with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Contrary to expectations, the broadcaster told Selleck that he couldn’t shoot both.
He chose Magnum. But he doesn’t regret this decision, as he says in the interview: Well, that’s not the worst thing that ever happened.
How do you know Tom Selleck? Tom Selleck is best known as a series actor. In addition to Magnum, he has appeared in almost 300 episodes of the series Blue Bloods: Crime Scene New York. Fans of the sitcom Friends may know him as Dr. Richard Burke. He was in the series for 10 episodes as Monica’s friend. But it wasn’t just Selleck who could have had a different role. Harrison Ford could also have snagged an Oscar-winning role: Harrison Ford regrets turning down an important role – could have gotten an Oscar for it in the end