Michael Bay has shown throughout his career that he’s a master at assembling big-budget, high-concept, and action-packed projects into blockbuster feature films.
It all started with Bad Boys in 1995, and in no time he was working with Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in The Rock. Both movies were commercial successes, leading to Bay being handed the responsibility to direct Armageddon, which had a massive budget of $140 million.
The movie starred superstars like Bruce Willis, Oscar-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Taylor, and Ben Affleck among others. At the time, some of these names had the potential to not only leave a young director like Bay in awe but also make his task a lot more challenging. Instead, it was perhaps newcomer Michael Clarke Duncan who proved to be the most tricky cast member to work with for the director.
Why Ben Affleck Dismissed Michael Clarke Duncan During the Filming of Michael Bay’s Movie
Michael Bay‘s Armageddon is the movie focusing on a threat Earth is facing from an asteroid the size of Texas. To stop the irreversible destruction, NASA’s Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) recruits a misfit team of deep-core drillers to save the planet.
While in the Bruce Willis-led movie it was the NASA honcho who turned to misfits for the bizarre mission, behind the scenes it was Bay’s casting woman, Bonnie Timmermann who seemingly found a misfit for the role of Bear. He recalled during a Q&A for Collider: “So I hire this woman who did commercials and videos with me, and she found this guy at a gym. All right? He had never done anything. He came into the casting session, and he’s huge.”
Duncan got the part, but his first day of working wasn’t very pleasing, at least for Ben Affleck. Bay added [via Collider]: “He had this voice, and was like a bad B or C actor. I’m like, dude. And Ben’s like, “Uh oh, Mike, what are we doing?” It was first take, second take. I’m like, oh my God, we’re in trouble.”
However, slowly other actors took him under his wing, and Duncan only kept getting better. His portrayal of Bear didn’t seem out of place with other major characters, and the 1998 movie turned out to be a huge hit grossing $553 million at the box office.
What Request Did Michael Bay Make to Michael Clarke Duncan After Ben Affleck Dismissed Him
The Transformers: Age of Extinction director not only relished dealing with so many aspects of a big-budget movie but also liked working with “real people” and turning them into actors.
The same could be said about Duncan, who received an interesting request from Bay. He revealed [via Collider]:
“I remember telling him in the psychology exam. I do that with all my actors, I give them a psychology exam. No, I’m kidding. In the psychology exam in the movie, I said, ‘I want you to cry.’ He’s like, ‘Mike, I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Mike, you can. They will love you.’ ‘No, I can’t.’ And he just started crying. It was like, he’s great.”
We can’t say for sure how much this little exercise helped Duncan, but he quickly went on to become a much better actor, receiving an Oscar nomination for his performance as a death row inmate in the 1999 hit, The Green Mile. The much-loved star passed away in 2012.
Source: Collider
