The Real Story of How Tom Selleck Almost Played Indiana Jones

One of the most infamous casting near-misses of all time is Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones. While it’s not unusual for actors to turn down huge roles that eventually become iconic—with pretty much every major leading man of the eighties inexplicably turning down Die Hard—one that tends to blow people’s minds is the fact that Tom Selleck nearly played Indiana Jones. In fact, he was actually hired to play the part, but he had to back out due to a contract he had already signed to do a little show called Magnum P.I. While one could argue that things turned out just fine for Selleck, as Magnum P.I.made him the biggest television star of the eighties, it had to have stuck in his craw that Raiders of the Lost Ark made Harrison Ford the biggest MOVIE star of the decade. What’s worse is how it was an open secret, with Selleck constantly having to revisit the casting near-miss in interview after interview. Even now, he’s constantly reminded of his brush with everyone’s favorite bullwhip-wielding archaeologist. But, given Harrison Ford’s history with producer George Lucas, why was he only the second choice to play a role he was so clearly born for? Let’s get into it.

When Star Wars hit theaters in 1977, it made Harrison Ford into a star, but he had been toiling in the Hollywood trenches for years without much success. While he had a nice role in American Graffiti, his career was going so poorly that he famously made ends meet as a carpenter. He had stayed close with George Lucas after Graffiti, but at the time Lucas was wary of reusing the same actors over and over again in his movies. He didn’t really fancy building himself a stock company, which is why many other actors were considered to play Han Solo, including Kurt Russell. Yet, Ford nailed the audition and ended up with the part. It made him a superstar, with him immediately graduating to headlining movies such as the Guns of Navarone sequel Force 10 from Navarone, The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder, and his solo starring debut, the WWII movie Hanover Street. Of course—every single one of them was a bomb, and while he still had The Empire Strikes Back to look forward to, people kind of figured Harrison Ford, superstar, wasn’t really going to happen.

At the same time, Tom Selleck was a leading man without much distinction on the small screen. He’d headlined a number of failed TV pilots, but none had come on. However, he did have a tiny role in the 1978 hit Coma where he played a doomed patient, and in the part he got his shirt off and sported his trademark moustache for the first time—and people noticed. He’d also had a solid recurring role on The Rockford Files as a private eye, which led to him being offered the leading role as Thomas Magnum in Magnum P.I. He filmed the pilot in Hawaii and that was that—for a while.

At the same time, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were getting ready to launch Raiders of the Lost Ark, which would mark the debut of whip-wielding archaeologist Indiana Jones. Knowing the franchise potential, Lucas and Spielberg wanted to emulate what Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had done with the James Bond series—hire an unknown actor, groom him for stardom, but also have him on board for a whole slew of movies. Many actors tested for the part, including Harry Hamlin, John Shea, Sam Elliott (can you imagine that!), and Tim Matheson. Yet, of all of them it was Selleck who, still sporting his Magnum P.I. moustache, nailed the part. If you look at his screen test, you can see why Selleck would have likely been as successful as Ford in the role, as he nails the scenes he’s reading, such as his screwball encounter with Marion. Everyone wanted him for the part, and for a while it looked like he would get it, as his option to do Magnum P.I. was going to expire in 10 days.

So what happened? Simple—CBS, hearing that Selleck was in high demand by Spielberg and Lucas, figured they had something with him as Magnum, so they greenlit the show. History would be repeated later in the decade when NBC did the same thing to Pierce Brosnan when he was hired to play James Bond in 1986. While Brosnan did eventually play Bond, Selleck never got his chance to play Indiana Jones. He could have thrown a fit and gotten himself released from his contract, but in an interview he said, “Look, I made a deal with Magnum and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m proud that I lived up to my contract. Some people said, you’ve got to get into a car and drive into a brick wall and get injured and get out of Magnum and do Raiders. I said, I gotta look my mom and dad in the eye and we don’t do that. So I did Magnum… That’s not so bad, is it?”

Indeed, Selleck went on to major success on Magnum P.I., with the show running most of the decade and being one of the most popular shows of its era. As for Ford, given that he was already so well known when he signed on for Raiders, they had to pay him a seven-figure salary, for one movie only. However, even if Lucas was wary of being overly reliant on Ford, it worked out well, as his star and director Steven Spielberg worked exceptionally well together, with Spielberg even hiring Ford’s wife at the time, Melissa Mathison, to write E.T.—which she did brilliantly (Ford himself actually was supposed to cameo as Elliott’s school principal, but the scene was cut). He made two more Indiana Jones movies before retiring from the role forever. Okay, well, that’s not exactly what happened, but it’s probably what should have happened, right?

As for Selleck, like I said, Magnum P.I. was a smash hit, and it did lead to him breaking into movies. He actually made not one but two movies that traded on the fact that he was supposed to play Indiana Jones, starring in the throwback adventure movies High Road to China and Lassiter. High Road to China actually made a decent amount of coin, but Lassiter flopped, as did 1984’s Runaway. For a long time it looked like Selleck as a movie star would never happen, but then he was cast against type in Three Men and a Baby, which became the biggest movie of 1987 and made him a movie star for a time. Since then, he’s had a remarkably consistent career on the small screen, having just recently ended a run on Blue Bloods, which was like twice the run he had on Magnum. Selleck has always been philosophical about his near-miss with Indiana Jones, and in his autobiography, he reveals that he actually went to see the movie in theaters when it opened in 1981 because he knew it would be great—and it was. He also said that the moment he saw Ford being chased by a boulder in the opening, he knew that Harrison Ford was Indiana Jones and vice versa. In the end, he was happy doing Magnum P.I., as the show, in its own way, made him a timeless icon. Sometimes things work out the way they have to—and really, could anyone else have ever played Indiana Jones but Harrison Ford? I doubt it.

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