Director Ridley Scott sat down with GQ magazine for a retrospective video interview and revealed that the financiers on his 1982 sci-fi thriller Blade Runner originally questioned his decision to cast Harrison Ford in the lead role.
Ford had already played the lead role of Han Solo in Star Wars at that point in his career, in addition to being picked by Steven Spielberg to headline Raiders of the Lost Ark. But apparently the financiers weren’t big fans of the biggest blockbuster hits of that time?
Scott explained: “Harrison Ford was not a star. He had just finished flying the Millennium Falcon in ‘Star Wars.’ I remember my financiers saying, ‘Who the fuck is Harrison Ford?’ And I said, ‘You’re going to find out.’ Harry became my leading man.”
Spielberg was in post-production on Raiders of the Lost Ark and gave Ford a thumbs up when Scott asked if he should cast the actor in Blade Runner. Ford was interested in working with Scott on the film as it marked a more dramatic character compared to Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
He went on to say: “On ‘Blade Runner’ I was inventing a whole new world. I spent five months with a very good writer Hampton Fancher, who’d really written a play adapted from the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’
“I read the book and felt there were 90 stories in the first 20 pages and it was too complex. Hampton wrote this beautiful story set in an apartment. Loved the dialogue, but I wanted to see what happens when he walks out the door.”
Scott went on to talk about how the film was not an instant success, and how it resulted in one of the worst reviews that’s ever been written about one of his films.
Blade Runner was a slow burn for its fans, but it eventually led to being quite a cult classic. If you’d like to watch the full Ridley Scott interview, check it out below:
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