How close did Will Smith REALLY get to starring in Django Unchained?

Imagine you’re back in 2011, deep in Hollywood rumorville. Quentin Tarantino has just finished writing his bloody, twisted love letter to spaghetti westerns, Django Unchained. It’s got bounty hunters, slave traders, revenge, gunfights, and enough buckets of blood to make Sam Peckinpah blush. But here’s the kicker: for a hot minute, the guy Tarantino wanted front and center as Django wasn’t Jamie Foxx. He wanted none other than Will Smith, The Fresh Prince who danced with Carlton, saved the world from aliens twice, rapped about Summertime, and became the biggest movie star on Earth. Now imagine him riding across the screen, decked out in cowboy gear, spitting one-liners between headshots…this was almost a possibility. But it didn’t. And the reasons why are fascinating. In fact, they might tell us more about Will Smith; the artist, the brand, the family man, than they do about Tarantino or Django. So jumping back to reality, we’re asking: What if Will Smith played the titular role of Django in Django Unchained? What movies would he not have done? How would Tarantino’s bloody fairy tale have changed? And maybe the biggest question of all: why did Smith pass on one of the most daring films of the last decade?

When Django Unchained was first announced, Tarantino’s script started making the rounds in Hollywood in 2011. The buzz was immediate. Here was Quentin blending exploitation cinema with revisionist western tropes to tackle America’s ugliest chapter, slavery, through the eyes of a freed man on a mission. Casting Django was going to be everything…but who would he pick?

Tarantino looked at a handful of actors. Michael K. Williams was considered, Idris Elba’s name floated around, and then Big Willie Style was in serious talks. He was the number one choice. Let’s take a refresher and look back to Smith’s career up to 2011. Just a couple of years before, he starred in I Am Legend and Hancock. Those were two times when Smith could still basically print money at the box office. Putting him in a Tarantino film would’ve been a massive cultural moment, and might have brought in more revenue to be Quentin’s most profitable box office achievement. 

Well, that summer the tide had shifted. Jamie Foxx emerged as the frontrunner, and eventually nabbed the role. The rest is history. Or at least, the version of history in this universe. But Smith wasn’t just passed over, he willingly chose to walk away. Which brings us to the ten million-dollar question: why? Will has been asked over the years why he turned down Django, and his answers peel back layers of who he was as a star at that moment.

Here’s the first reason. Smith didn’t think Django was the true lead. At a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Smith admitted: “I wanted to do Django, but I thought it was more about Schultz than Django. I needed to be the lead character.” That Schultz, of course, was Christoph Waltz’s German bounty hunter, who ends up killing the film’s main villain, Calvin Candie. Smith even pushed Tarantino, saying, “No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!” Tarantino said no. Smith walked. He later called the screenplay genius but admitted, “It just wasn’t for me.”

So what’s the second reason? Well, Smith wanted the movie to be a love story and not a revenge story. He said he didn’t envision Django as a gun-toting avenger but as a man driven purely by love for his wife. In his words: “Violence begets violence. For me, the greatest display of love in the history of cinema had to be Django.” In other words, he wanted to turn Tarantino’s operatic revenge western into a sweeping love epic. Which, if you know Tarantino, was never gonna happen.

Third reason? The toll it might’ve taken on him and his family. In later interviews, Smith revealed he had a kind of family meeting about the role. His kids, as well as his own instincts,told him the darkness of slavery, revenge, and trauma might bleed into his home life. He was wary of playing a character that was brutal. He even admitted that earlier in his career he avoided slave roles because he didn’t want to perpetuate negative depictions of Black people. But yet, a decade later, he finally took on Emancipation, a film about slavery that he said was “emotionally and spiritually devastating” to make. It is a film that didn’t bode over as well as Django and truly didn’t stay in the culture zeitgeist as well either. It’s as if Django haunted him for years.

So between not killing the villain, wanting a love story, and not wanting to drag that pain home, Will Smith chose to say no.

Alright, ready to play some film-nerd fantasy booking: what if Will Smith HAD played Django? First off, the tone of the movie would’ve been completely different. Jamie Foxx played Django with this cool, quiet intensity. He’s stoic, deadly, and slips into Tarantino’s heightened violence like a glove. Will is a performer who thrives on charm and charisma. It’s not that he can’t go dark, he’s put on excellent dramatic performances like Ali or Pursuit of Happyness. But putting him in Tarantino’s blood-splattered playground, and you know the energy shifts. Suddenly, Django might be cracking more one-liners, dropping more bravado into the mix. Maybe a little more “Wild Wild West” swagger, and a little less Leone-inspired stoicism. We’re not saying its exactly how he would act, but we’re betting along those lines.

Let’s talk about the story. What if Smith had his way and Django kills Candie. That changes the whole climax. Tarantino’s version is all about Schultz pulling the trigger, which cost him his life, and leaves Django to mop up the aftermath. If Django kills Candie himself, that catharsis shifts. It becomes a different film, less about a partnership and sacrifice, and more about straight-up vengeance. Tarantino, though, was married to his version. Which means if Smith had been cast, maybe he and Quentin would’ve clashed nonstop. Maybe the film we know doesn’t even exist in its current form, an idea us fans can’t fathom.

Also, what about the casting ripple effects? Would Christoph Waltz still have been in it? Would Tarantino have doubled down on Leo as Candie if Smith was anchoring the other side? Maybe. But it’s also possible the chemistry we got, Foxx’s quiet resolve playing against Waltz’s energy, wouldn’t have worked the same. And let’s be honest, Tarantino and Smith together? That’s like mixing oil and vinegar. They’re both too alpha to give ground. Think two Christian Bales on Terminator: Salvation set. But the crew would have been asking themselves who’s directing who?

If Will Smith was the star of Django, his entire career trajectory could’ve shifted.

Let’s not forget what he did instead. Around that same time, he starred in Men in Black 3, which was a much better sequel than the previous one before it. Later, he did After Earth with Jaden, which was a critical disaster and another L for M. Night Shyamalan. If Django had been his 2012 movie instead of MIB 3, suddenly Smith is back in the awards conversation. But to be fair, he could have had both. Smith started filming MIB in 2010 and went back for reshoots in 2011. Because these are both Sony Pictures properties, the studio could have worked out a deal for Will to have his cake and eat it too. Hell, maybe he won an Oscar years earlier, maybe MIB 3 would have been the hit of the summer over The Avengers, which was a huge gamble at the time. Maybe he never does After Earth. Maybe he doesn’t spend the 2010s struggling to find another defining role.

And what would have happened to Jamie Foxx? Losing Django could’ve been a massive setback. It revitalized his career and gave him one of his defining performances, besides Mother F**ker Jones in Horrible Bosses the year before. Without it, who knows and this is all speculation. It’s possible Jamie wouldn’t have headlined Baby Driver or been bestowed the role of Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. 

Box office-wise, Django made $426 million without Smith. With him, it probably would have made more. But would it still have the same bite? Or would audiences have felt like they were watching “Will Smith does Tarantino” instead of Tarantino at his rawest?

At the end of the day, Will Smith passing on Django Unchained is one of those big Hollywood “what ifs” that makes you stop and wonder. He had the star power, the charisma, the reach to take Tarantino’s film into a different stratosphere. But the creative clash was too big. Smith wanted love whereas Tarantino wanted blood. And those two visions just couldn’t live in the same movie.

What we got instead was a brutal, stylish, and unforgettable revenge western that cemented Jamie Foxx in film history and gave us one of Tarantino’s highest-grossing films ever. What we didn’t get was the Will Smith version, a “love story” that probably would’ve been bigger at the box office, softer in the edges, and maybe not as sharp in its bite.

Still, it’s fascinating to think about. Will Smith as Django would’ve changed the film, changed his career, maybe even changed the course of Tarantino’s later work. But sometimes the roles you don’t take are just as defining as the ones you do. For Smith, Django was the road not taken which was a choice that says as much about his priorities as it does about the film itself. And he’s not alone in that. Tarantino actually wrote the role of Donny “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds for Adam Sandler, but scheduling conflicts meant Sandler never picked up the bat, leaving Eli Roth to step in. Just like Smith, Sandler’s absence reshaped the film in ways that are impossible to ignore. It’s a reminder that in Tarantino’s world, casting “what ifs” are almost as legendary as the movies themselves.

And hey, maybe that’s the lesson. Every Hollywood “what if” leaves behind two stories: the one we saw, and the one that might’ve been. And in this case, the Django that wasn’t is almost as compelling as the Django that was.

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