Austin Butler Passed on Tom Cruise for Quentin Tarantino — And It Paid Off
Austin Butler’s Hollywood fairy tale unfolded in real time: one moment working with Denzel Washington, the next racing to a Quentin Tarantino audition — and walking out with a role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Some careers flip in a single day. For Austin Butler, that day involved Denzel Washington, Quentin Tarantino, and an unintentionally iced-out Tom Cruise. Not bad for a Tuesday.
The day Butler stumbled into QT land... and out of Top Gun
Back when he was working with Denzel Washington, Butler got the call to come read for Quentin Tarantino. He walked into what was supposed to be a standard audition in Los Angeles and found himself in a long, freewheeling workshop with Tarantino instead. He walked out with Tex Watson, the part-time cowboy, part-time killer, full-time Manson hanger-on in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'. And with that, he basically walked away from 'Top Gun: Maverick'—without ever meaning to.
Here is how the dominoes fell. In 2017, director Joseph Kosinski got an early draft of a 'Top Gun' sequel, flew to Paris to pitch the idea to Tom Cruise between 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' setups, and once Cruise said yes, the studio hit go. Butler was among the actors lined up to audition for one of the new crop of pilots. On the same day, he was due to see Tarantino in LA. That QT session ran long—in a good way for him, in a disastrous way for his calendar.
The phone-off audition that nuked his other appointments
According to Jay Glennie’s book 'The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', Butler went into the QT workshop, had his phone out of commission, and re-emerged around 9 p.m. When he finally powered up, his screen lit up like a Christmas tree: missed calls, panicked texts, voicemails stacking up. His New York reps were freaking out. They were close to calling the LAPD for a welfare check. One of the slots he blew past? A meeting for 'Top Gun: Maverick' with Kosinski.
When Butler got his agents on the line, they unloaded: Where are you? Are you okay? You missed everything today. Butler, newly cast as Tex Watson, got to say the kind of sentence actors dream of, especially with Tarantino talking about retirement for years:
"I am sorry, but I got that part. I am going to be doing the movie with Quentin."
What he gave up vs. what he gained
Butler never had to make a tortured either/or call between Cruise and Tarantino. He just ran out the clock on one while winning the other. In hindsight, turning into the unnervingly calm, quietly terrifying Tex Watson was a launchpad. It is hard to picture anyone else playing him in Tarantino’s sun-baked love letter to Hollywood. On the flip side, it is just as hard to swap out Miles Teller or Glen Powell from 'Top Gun: Maverick' as Rooster and Hangman. Sliding doors, sure—but both movies landed exactly like they should have.
The movie, by the numbers
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino
- Main cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Sydney Sweeney, Bruce Dern, Al Pacino
- Runtime: 161 minutes
- Budget: $90–96 million
- Box office: $392.1 million
- Oscars: 2 wins, 10 nominations
- Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
- IMDb: 7.6
- Streaming: 'Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood' is currently on fuboTV
Be honest: would you have wanted Butler in 'Top Gun: Maverick' too? And if so, which role are you swapping him into?