Johnny Depp could have been part of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but had he been cast, it would have actually been a mistake. Quentin Tarantino has explored a variety of genres in his movies since the early 1990s, and while his first movie, Reservoir Dogs, was a critical success, his big break arrived two years later with Pulp Fiction. Thanks to its non-linear narrative, characters, and the performances of its cast, Pulp Fiction is widely regarded as Tarantino’s best work, and it continues to reach new generations of viewers.
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Pulp Fiction is formed by segments arranged in a non-linear way, with each one led by two characters, and all of them crossing paths at some point. However, due to how the movie was marketed and their roles in their respective segments (and in others), the main characters in Pulp Fiction are considered to be Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), Vincent Vega (John Travolta), and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), but there are many others that are essential for the overall story of the movie to progress. Among them is Ringo a.k.a. Pumpkin (Tim Roth), who only appears at the beginning and end of Pulp Fiction, and who was almost played by Johnny Depp, which would have been a mistake.
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How Johnny Depp’s Pumpkin Would’ve Been Different To Tim Roth’s
While speaking on the podcast 2 Bears, 1 Cave, Tarantino shared that during the casting process for Pulp Fiction, he had a list of actors he wanted for the main characters. For Pumpkin, his first choice was Tim Roth, followed by Christian Slater and Johnny Depp. Producer Mike Medavoy preferred to have Depp as Pumpkin, but Tarantino clapped back by asking if he thought Johnny Depp playing a character who is only in the opening and closing scenes would “add that much to the box office”. At the time Pulp Fiction was in pre-production, Depp was best known for his roles in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Cry-Baby, and Edward Scissorhands, all very different from Pulp Fiction.
Surely, Depp would have brought a more dramatic, almost-tortured layer to the character of Pumpkin, especially in the scene where he’s being cornered by Jules and changes his mind about the robbery. Depp would have inevitably given Pumpkin a “bad boy” image, very different from the cool and calm style Roth gave the character, which would have changed the aforementioned scene where he ultimately decides to leave the diner with Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) and not continue with the robbery, possibly making this change in Pumpkin hard to believe.
Tim Roth Was Great As Pumpkin (& Johnny Depp Would’ve Been Worse)
Tim Roth’s performance as Pumpkin in Pulp Fiction is one of the many great performances in the movie, and even though he just appears at the beginning and the end of the movie, he made a great impression. While Depp wouldn’t have been a bad Pumpkin, he wouldn’t have been as great as Roth was, as it was that cool but also slightly nervous attitude he gave him that made Pumpkin vulnerable, thus making his change of mind at the end of Pulp Fiction believable. Pulp Fiction addresses the theme of redemption through different characters, among them Pumpkin, and Johnny Depp’s acting style wouldn’t have fitted Pumpkin’s quick road to redemption as well as Tim Roth’s did.
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