Our nation was rocked to its very core at the recent revelation from actor Elizabeth Perkins that Robert De Niro was very nearly her co-star on the classic 1988 dramedy Big, and with him in the adult Josh role, it would have been a “horror movie.” After a few months of leaving us all to convulse in wonder over this surprising information, Jimmy Fallon has thankfully asked De Niro about what happened during a recent Tonight Show appearance.
Whereas Perkins recalls the only reason De Niro didn’t move forward with the role was due to “scheduling conflicts,” the man himself explains: “We had a thing, an issue with the negotiation so it went the way it went, so that was fine.” And that’s all he had to say on the subject. Check out the clip below to hear the man say it himself, even though most likely you can hear his voice in that clipped sentence, anyhow.
The iconic actor’s terseness aside, it’s great to see De Niro in good spirits–in mid-May he sustained a leg injury while he was in Oklahoma filming the new Martin Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon. He subsequently flew back to New York to seek medical attention, but was previously scheduled to head back anyhow. Production is not expected to be delayed.
Big eventually landed Tom Hanks, thankfully, and Hanks’s most recent film is News of the World, and he has at least three other movies on the horizon, including playing Geppetto in the live-action Pinocchio. De Niro has two films currently in post-production. Perkins recently had a memorable run on the short-lived Netflix series GLOW, playing Birdie Howard.
Check it out
