Leonardo DiCaprio Would Have Starred In ‘Baywatch’ If Not For David Hasselhoff
Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most talented and in-demand actors in Hollywood today, but can anyone imagine him wearing red swimming trunks and running around the beach trying to save people’s lives? The 41-year-old actor almost starred in the popular TV series Baywatch when he was younger; and this was revealed by the show’s producers Douglas Schwartz and Michael Berk during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
According to the website, Leo was only 15 years old when he auditioned for the role of Hobie Buchannon, the son of David Hasselhoff’s character Mitch. Unfortunately, the role was given to Jeremy Jackson who was only 9 years old when he auditioned.
“We actually had DiCaprio ready to be cast,” Berk revealed. “But David thought he was too old to play his son.”
“David thought it would make him look older. He had a lot of concerns of that type,” Schwartz added.
Apart from Leonardo DiCaprio, Hasselhoff also tried to stop the producers from casting Pamela Anderson in Baywatch, but he didn’t succeed because the 49-year-old actress played C.J. Parker for five seasons. The 63-year-old really fought hard not to have her in the show because of her reputation.
“She had these enormous breasts and David thought he would be upstaged by everyone looking at her breasts. Which is what happened,” Douglas added.
Pamela’s presence in the show actually did good for the 90s’ beach drama. Instead of taking her out of the series because of the sex tape with her ex-husband Tommy Lee, which leaked in 1995, the producers decided to keep her.
“They came to us and said, ‘What are we gonna do? Should we leave her out of the next episode?'” Berk said.
“We had to figure out how to deal with it. So we just kept going.” Schwartz added. “The ratings doubled. That was a big thing for Baywatch.”
Apart from the Leonardo DiCaprio and Pamela Anderson casting issue, Douglas Schwartz and Michael Berk revealed more secrets to The Hollywood Reporter including Nicole Eggert’s boob job. The 44-year-old actress starred as Summer Quinn in the television series, but she was overshadowed by the blonde bombshell. The star of Charles in Charge surprised everyone when she appeared on the set with giant double Ds after a brief production break.
Schwartz opened up about the headache he had to face because of what Eggert did. He revealed that the only solution was to hide her for the rest of the episode since they already shot some scenes with her having small breasts. They couldn’t afford to re-shoot those scenes again just because of her breast enhancement.
Because of Baywatch‘s popularity, a big-screen adaptation and musical are on the way. The film which stars Dwayne Johnson as Mitch Buchannan and Zac Efron as Matt Brody is scheduled for release on May 19, 2017. The London West End musical, on the other hand, will premiere in 2018.
“I get unhappy doing things that I’m not passionate about,” Leonardo admits. “Because I feel like I’m squandering this incredible gift I’ve been given to finance films.”
“As soon as my name alone was enough to make this happen, I vowed to myself that I was going to work with directors who were changing cinema, doing something important, you know?” he added. “This goes back to when I was a teenager, feverishly watching movies like Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now and saying to myself, someday, I’m going to be a part of films like this.”
[Photos by Tinseltown/Shutterstock.com]
