DeForest Kelley was a dramatic actor, not a comedian! And he was just one of several performers who stood their ground and deviated from the screenplay.
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00:00DeForest Kelly was a dramatic actor, not a comedian, and he was just one of several performers
00:05who stood their ground and deviated from the screenplay.
00:09After the lackluster response to Star Trek The Motion Picture in 1979, 1982's Wrath of
00:14Calm pretty much saved the franchise.
00:16It delivered action, adventure, and one heartbreaking moment that shook fans to their core — the
00:21death of Mr. Spock.
00:23Spock's sacrifice to save the Enterprise is one of the most heartbreaking deaths in movie
00:27history, thanks in part to the gut-wrenching reaction of Captain Kirk.
00:31He's dead already.
00:33But Scotty's line only exists because DeForest Kelly, who played Dr. McCoy, refused to say
00:37what was scripted.
00:38He was reportedly supposed to have told Kirk,
00:41He's dead, Jim,
00:42the character's iconic catchphrase.
00:43It might seem like a strange refusal since Kelly said it so many times before, but there
00:48was some logic to the decision.
00:50Kelly reportedly worried that the line had become overused and that it might elicit unintended
00:54laughter during what was supposed to be the film's most powerful scene.
00:57McCoy does get his own emotional line in the final cut, though, as he warns Kirk not to
01:01enter the engine chamber to help his best friend.
01:03You'll flood the whole compartment.
01:06Pretty much every Star Wars fan knows the legend by now.
01:09While filming one of the most important scenes in The Empire Strikes Back, Harrison Ford's
01:13Han Solo was originally supposed to say,
01:15I love you, too, in response to Princess Leia's I love you.
01:18But instead, he famously uttered,
01:19I know.
01:21This effortlessly shows just how cool Han Solo is, while melting the hearts of everyone
01:25who wishes they were Princess Leia.
01:27And it's all thanks to Ford coming up with it right there on the spot.
01:30But what some movie buffs may not know is that there was an entirely separate line written
01:33for Han as he passed by Leia on his way to be frozen in carbonite.
01:37The scene was going to begin with Leia telling Han,
01:39I love you.
01:40I couldn't tell you before, but it's true.
01:42Then Han was supposed to look her way, pause, and respond sternly,
01:45Just remember that, because I'll be back.
01:47During filming, director Irvin Kershner agreed with Ford that the dialogue was a bit too
01:51much, so Ford rewrote the scene on the spot, coming up with new lines for both characters,
01:55and the result was one of the most iconic exchanges in the franchise.
01:592012's The Avengers solidified the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a force to be reckoned
02:04with.
02:05It united multiple iconic superheroes, but there's no question that its biggest star
02:08was Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, as he got the biggest scenes and the best lines.
02:12One of them comes right at the end of the film, as Tony Stark asks his teammates if
02:16they've ever had a certain Middle Eastern street food.
02:18Have you ever tried shawarma?
02:21There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here.
02:23I don't know what it is, but I want to try it.
02:25But that line is only there because Downey hated what he was originally supposed to say.
02:29Famously rewritten by Joss Whedon in place of an earlier draft by Zak Penn, the script
02:33had Tony asking the rest of the Avengers, what's next?
02:36But Downey insisted that the moment called for something a bit more lively, clever, and
02:40fun.
02:41Whedon agreed and jotted down pages and pages worth of alternate lines, but Downey still
02:44wasn't happy.
02:45He ultimately opted for something wholly of his own creation.
02:48The shawarma ad-lib led to the filming of an entirely new scene that was tacked on at
02:52the end of the credits, and it's since become one of the film's signature moments.
02:56Christopher Lee has had plenty of famous roles in his decades-long career, including one
03:00of the greatest villains of all time, Count Dracula.
03:03The 1958 version of Dracula features one of Lee's finest performances, as he's able to
03:08strike fear into anyone's heart with just a simple fierce glare.
03:13This version of Dracula wasn't always supposed to be so mum, though.
03:16As Lee himself explained in an interview with Classic Monsters,
03:19"...people all over the world who have seen that film have asked me why I didn't speak
03:23in it.
03:24The answer is very simple.
03:25I'd read the scripts, and the lines were literally unsayable."
03:27Lee was clearly trying to evoke the feeling of Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel, and
03:31he felt that the lines he was given weren't faithful to the source material.
03:35As he recalled,
03:36"...this was a great fight I used to have over the years with Hammer.
03:39I kept on saying, why don't you use Stoker's words?"
03:41And obviously, frustrated Lee was blunt with producers, as he simply insisted,
03:45"...I'm sorry.
03:46I'm not saying these lines."
03:48The Wrath of Khan wasn't the only time a Star Trek actor refused to deliver a line of dialogue
03:52that just wasn't working.
03:54But in the case of 1991's Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, Nichelle Nichols had
03:59a somewhat different concern than DeForest Kelly.
04:01While entertaining a group of Klingons for a state dinner, the Enterprise crew is nervous
04:05and several officers display subtle bias against them.
04:08Lieutenant Uhura was supposed to do the same thing, but Nichols balked at a line meant
04:12to demonstrate that humans still had some prejudice to overcome in the 22nd century.
04:16William Shatner recalled in his book Star Trek Movie Memories, Uhura, as originally
04:20scripted, would have made reference to the kinder, gentler Klingons by saying something
04:24to the effect of,
04:25"...yeah, but would you want your daughter to marry one?"
04:28But Nichols refused to say it, likely because of its obvious parallels to American racism
04:32amidst the 1960s civil rights movement, when interracial marriage was cause for concern.
04:37"...did you see the way they ate?"
04:40Tessa Thompson delivered a string of noteworthy performances in the 2010s that led to her
04:44eventually encountering some intergalactic travelers, as she played M alongside Chris
04:48Hemsworth, Agent H in 2019's Men in Black International.
04:52Even though she already had some experience in blockbuster franchises, Thompson had at
04:55least one line she wouldn't cross.
04:57In particular, she refused to say one bit of dialogue that came off as blatant nostalgia.
05:02During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she was asked if she would ever utter Will
05:05Smith's famous line from the original Men in Black.
05:07"...I make this look good."
05:11But as Thompson made clear,
05:12"...I wouldn't have said it.
05:13In fact, I think someone did ask me to, just as an option, and I said no.
05:17M is just different from that character.
05:19Yeah, I was really conscious of too much nostalgia."
05:21Nevertheless, Thompson did accept that callbacks were part of the game, as she admitted,
05:25"...inside of that, there were moments when I thought, let's lean in."
05:29Chris Binglover is best known as George McFly in Back to the Future, and he famously sued
05:33Universal Studios when they used his likeness in the first sequel.
05:36Since then, he's had a bit of a prickly reputation, and one of the most famous examples of that
05:40happened on the set of Charlie's Angels, the 2000 big-screen reboot of the 70s TV show.
05:45In the film, Binglover played a creepy, lanky assassin known only as the Thin Man.
05:50But in the studio's first meeting with the actor, he made it crystal clear that he hated
05:54the lines that he was given in the script and wouldn't sign on unless he could make
05:57a huge change.
05:59As he recalled to The Guardian, the dialogue was just expositional, but instead of writing
06:03new lines to say, Binglover had a radical idea — his character would be entirely mute.
06:07Perhaps unexpectedly, director McG quickly got behind the idea, and Binglover performed
06:12the whole part without uttering a single word.
06:15With three Oscar wins and 21 nominations as of 2024, Meryl Streep may very well be one
06:20of the most talented women to ever grace the big screen.
06:22With all the accolades she's received over the years, people tend to listen to what she
06:26has to say.
06:27But even when she didn't like a certain line in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada, there wasn't
06:31much discussion about what to do.
06:33The moment came during the table read, as Streep had a problem with what eventually
06:37became one of the film's famous lines.
06:39While her character, fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, sits in a car with her assistant
06:43Andy, she was supposed to have said,
06:44"...everybody wants to be me."
06:46But Streep suggested a simple one-word alteration, rendering the final version a little bit more
06:50modest.
06:51"...everybody wants to be us."
06:551973's The Way We Were is one of the most beloved romantic dramas of all time.
06:59Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford came together to tell the story of a Jewish anti-war activist
07:04who falls in love with Redford's politically disinterested WASP.
07:08Things eventually get hot and heavy between the two leads, and there's one scene that
07:11originally included a line in the script that Redford simply wouldn't utter.
07:15Specifically, he refused to tell Streisand's character, but to be better this time, as
07:19he receives to go for another round in bed.
07:21As Robert Harfler wrote in his book The Way They Were, how epic battles and bruised egos
07:26brought a classic Hollywood love story to the screen, Redford had remarked that he was
07:30never bad in bed, so there was no way his character would be.
07:33The obvious implication is that he feared that the line would damage his reputation
07:37as a virile man whom the ladies adored.
07:40In the 1930s, there weren't many famous black actors, and even fewer of them were women.
07:45But if there was one black performer whom audiences knew, it was Hattie McDaniel, a
07:49tale-blazing actor who starred in hundreds of films.
07:52In 1940, she became the first black actor to win an Academy Award for her performance
07:56as a house servant mammy in 1939's Gone with the Wind, an epic romance set amidst the American
08:02Civil War.
08:03Gone with the Wind was very much a product of its time, with subject matter that has
08:06proven to be problematic in the decades since.
08:08To McDaniel's considerable credit, she refused to play a part that could have been much more
08:13controversial if she hadn't spoken up.
08:15As it turned out, the script didn't just call for black characters to defend slavery.
08:18It also contained multiple uses of some of the worst racial slurs.
08:22Producers argued that such language brought authenticity and that it wouldn't be a problem
08:27as long as the dialogue was spoken by so-called better black characters.
08:31But McDaniel wasn't having it, and ultimately, she was reportedly able to convince the filmmakers
08:36to ditch many of the slurs.
08:37It ain't fittin', it just ain't fittin'.
08:40It ain't fittin'.
08:43James Cagney was often typecast as a gangster or a tough guy throughout his career, but
08:47that wasn't yet the case when he filmed Sinner's Holiday in 1930.
08:51That's because the film was his big-screen debut, as he played one of two brothers whose
08:55mother's boardwalk arcade is a front for a bootlegging operation during Prohibition.
08:59Though it was his first movie, Cagney wasn't afraid to speak up to director John G. Adolphe
09:04when he was called upon to deliver a line that he absolutely despised.
09:08As Cagney once explained,
09:09"...there was a line in the show where I was supposed to be crying on my mother's breast."
09:13Warner Bros. executive Daryl Zanuck had written the line, and I was expected to say it.
09:17It was,
09:18"'I'm your baby, ain't I?'
09:19I refused to say it.
09:20Adolphe said,
09:21"'Well, I'm gonna tell Zanuck.'"
09:23Even in the face of threats that could jeopardize his career, Cagney simply wouldn't do it.
09:27So he held his ground, the line was removed, and he went on to become one of the biggest
09:31movie stars of his generation.