The Netflix thriller had to change course from the popular novel
If Julia Roberts is "the Michael Jordan of acting," then Denzel Washington is the Tom Brady. And 30 years after starring together in The Pelican Brief, the legendary actors were set to reunite for Netflix's apocalyptic hit Leave the World Behind — until Washington bowed out, a decision that caused a major change to the project.
Released in late 2020, author Rumaan Alam's novel followed New York City couple Amanda and Clay Sanford (played by Roberts and Ethan Hawke in the movie) as they take their kids on an impromptu weekend getaway.
But their trip is suddenly thrown into chaos when the alleged owners of the vacation home return, seeking refuge from a mysterious cyberattack. As written by Alam, the party crashers are G.H. and Ruth, an older wealthy couple. So, 68-year-old Washington was initially cast as G.H. by Leave the World Behind writer-director Sam Esmail.
Esmail, the creator of Mr. Robot, already planned to make changes to the story, explaining that he's not a fan of direct adaptations. "I know people don't necessarily agree with me on that, and especially writers of a source material because they do want to see a one-to-one copy of it for the adaptation," he recently told The Messenger.
"And I just philosophically disagree with that. I don't understand how you can think that something that works so well in one medium would work equally as well in another. I think there has to be a translation process.
And so I was very upfront with Rumaan about it, and I already had some of the bigger changes in mind, and I shared that with him as well. And it was really up to Rumaan whether or not he was going to be okay with that, and, lucky for me, he was."
Among Esmail's biggest changes was his divisive ending, but another came about when Washington exited the project over "scheduling conflicts," killing the filmmaker's dream of reuniting Roberts and Washington (as well as our hopes of a Training Day reunion between Washington and Hawke!).
Instead of looking for another actor in the same age range as Washington, Esmail went in another direction, casting two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, aging down the role of G.H. to fit the 49-year-old.
"Having done the film now with Mahershala, at this point, I can never imagine another G.H.," Esmail said. "I think he’s so great in that part. And the whole thing about G.H. is that I’ve always pictured him as this sort of Hitchcockian leading man, that sort of Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart, sort of savvy, but with an everyman quality to them."
But, in the process of bringing in Ali, Esmail decided to completely flip the relationship between G.H. and Ruth, switching her from his wife to his daughter. Industry star Myha'la, 27, stepped in as Ruth, adding a millennial perspective to the dramatic events.
“I thought changing Ruth from the wife to the daughter was a clever move on Sam Esmail’s part,” Myha’la shared. “Her generation interacts with technology and media in a different way from everyone else in the film.
So she becomes this interesting intersection of wealth, race, gender, age, and as a result, she can feel a bit like a contradiction. She’s young and woke, but she still judges people for their background. She’s a minority in every sense of the word, except for the fact that she grew up with money and opportunities.”
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