Movie And TV Scenes Actors Outright Refused To Film

Don't know Kane Hodder? He is the masked actor who has played serial killer Jason Voorhees in four Friday the 13th movies. 

Hodder may not have had a problem with Jason slashing innocent victims to death, but he did have a major issue with his character being cruel to animals. In the script for 1989's Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Voorhees arrives in the Big Apple and cruelly kicks a dog that is barking at him.

Hodder refused to do the dog-kicking scene because he felt that's not something his character would ever do. The actor's protest worked. The scene got cut from the film, and Jason went about just slaying people. 

In 2001, Michelle Rodriguez was an up-and-coming actor with the opportunity to co-star in a big-budget action movie called The Fast and the Furious. Despite the possibility of the film becoming a mega Hollywood franchise, Rodriguez would not stay quiet regarding a love triangle subplot. In the original script, both Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) and Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) fall for Letty Ortiz (Rodriguez). The actor felt the story arc did not ring true to her character. 

Rodriguez put her job and perhaps even her entire career on the line when she refused to film the love triangle story scenes. "Is it realistic for a Latin girl who's with the alpha-est of the alpha males to cheat on him with the cute boy? I had to put my foot down," said Rodriguez. "I basically cried and said I'm going to quit and, 'Don't sue me, please - I'm sorry, but I can't do this in front of millions of people.' My whole point in being an actress is that I thought I got to live a dream. And I don't dream about being [promiscuous]! Do you?!"

Thankfully, Diesel agreed with Rodriguez and totally supported her wishes. "Vin was the first one to pull me to the side while I was crying, and he just looked at me and said, 'I got your back,'" recalled Rodriguez. "'Chill out and let me handle this, and you're right - it makes me look bad anyway.'"

The filmmakers listened. The scenes featuring the love triangle were all cut. 

The writers at The Office certainly got a lot of material from Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam's (Jenna Fischer) up-and-down relationship over nine seasons. In order to drum up some drama on the long-running sitcom, the writers decided to throw a major monkey wrench into their marriage. 

In a script for Season 8 of the series, the writers penned a scene where Jim kisses Pam’s Dunder Mifflin maternity fill-in Cathy (Lindsey Broad).

However, Krasinski refused to cheat on his TV wife. “That’s the only time I remember putting my foot down... I remember saying things that I never thought I’d say before, like, ‘I’m not going to shoot it,’” Krasinski shared in the book Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office.

“My feeling is there is a threshold with which you can push our audience,” the actor added. “They are so dedicated. We have shown such great respect to them. But there’s a moment where if you push them too far, they’ll never come back. And I think that if you show Jim cheating, they’ll never come back.”

The writers ultimately decided to drop the cheating plot. Instead, Cathy tries to tempt Jim while the company is on a business trip to Florida. Jim rebuffs her forward advances and stays true to his wife and marriage. 

Seems like Krasinski made the right decision. Fans of The Office were so upset by Cathy's moves they've taken it out on the actor who portrayed her. Broad revealed in 2020 on Twitter, "If anyone is wondering what it was like to be on The Office, the best comedy of this century: I just posted something on Instagram about how my dog was murdered and a bunch of people were like 'F*ck you, Cathy, she deserved it!' So. There ya go!" 

Emma Watson refused to be a part of a scene in the meta raunchy 2013 apocalyptic comedy This is the End. In the improvised scene, Danny McBride plays a cannibal and Channing Tatum is his gimp on a leash.

The rumors were that the English actor stormed off the set in disgust. Seth Rogen, who wrote and produced the film, later addressed what really happened.

“Emma Watson did not 'storm off the set,' and it's (expletive) that the perception is that she did," Rogen wrote on Twitter. "The scene was not what was originally scripted, it was getting improvised, changed drastically, and was not what she agreed to."

Rogen also added during a 2021 interview with British GQ that he didn't blame the actor for refusing to be in the scene.

"I don’t look back on that and think, ‘How dare she do that?’ You know? I think sometimes when you read something, when it comes to life, it doesn’t seem to be what you thought it was," said Rogen. "But it was not some terrible ending to our relationship. She came back the next day to say goodbye. She helped promote the film. No hard feelings, and I couldn’t be happier with how the film turned out in the end. Besides, she was probably right. It was probably funnier the way we ended up doing it."

Mike Myers was just a few years into his Saturday Night Live career when he made his feature film debut in 1992's SNL popular sketch turned movie Wayne's World. Myers was a co-writer on the film and the titular movie protagonist. However, the Canadian actor nearly walked away from his star-making role.

Myers revealed during a 2014 interview on Marc Maron's podcast that the movie's most memorable scene, the five friends driving around rocking out to "Bohemian Rhapsody," originally featured a Guns N' Roses tune.

The green actor became so adamant about using the 1975 Queen song that he not only refused to film the now-famous scene, but he also threatened to quit. Myers said:

An example of something I fought very, very hard for, and it was my first movie: It was "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Wayne’s World. They wanted Guns N’ Roses. Guns N’ Roses were very, very popular. They were a fantastic band - Queen, at that point, not by me and not by hard-core fans, but the public had sort of forgotten about them. Freddie [Mercury] had gotten sick, the last time we had seen them was on Live Aid, and then there were a few albums after where they were sort of straying away from their arena-rock roots. But I always loved "Bohemian Rhapsody." I thought it was a masterpiece. So I fought really, really hard for it. And at one point I said, "Well, I’m out. I don’t want to make this movie if it’s not 'Bohemian Rhapsody.'"

Myers's instincts proved to be spot on. "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Wayne's World will be forever linked for producing pure comedy gold. 

Now we know Mahershala Ali as a two-time Academy Award winner with an impressive filmography. Ali's acting career was just getting started when he landed the supporting role as Tizzy Weathers in David Fincher's 2008 fantasy romance The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Despite the possibility of getting his big Hollywood break, Ali nearly turned down the role in the high-profile movie. The actor revealed during a 2020 episode of Common's podcast, Mind Power Mixtape, that because he is an Ahmadi Muslim, he could not perform a simulated sex scene with his on-screen love interest Queenie (Taraji P. Henson). 

“My old agent called me and said, ‘Mahershala, you got the part.’ And I said, ‘There’s just one thing... There is that one sex scene where they kiss... If there’s a sex scene, I can’t do it,’” revealed Ali.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an examination of a man (Brad Pitt) who ages in reverse. Fincher ultimately did not feel that showing the sex scene between Queenie and Tizzy was important enough to the story to risk losing Ali. 

Fincher opted to film the scene in a way that could accommodate Ali's religious beliefs. "Taraji and I begin to kiss, and we fall out of the frame," Ali said. "It wasn’t clear if [Fincher] was trying to have, like, some bumping and grinding... which I doubt he was... At that time, 15 years ago, I was still like, ‘Okay, I can only go up to this point,’ just because of - just trying to hold a space of respect for my religion."