Phoenix got the main role in the thriller “Split” M. Night Shyamalan from 2016. When he suddenly dropped out, the producers hired him at the last minute James McAvoy. The British actor mentioned it during an episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast.
“He’s an incredible actor,” he said of Phoenix. “I think his performance would be different from mine, but it would definitely be incredible.”
McAvoy added that he had a very short time to prepare for the role. “Sometimes, jumping in at the last minute is the best way to go. I think (Phoenix) dropped out two weeks before we started shooting. Really last minute. I had two weeks to prepare.”
In “Split,” he played Kevin, a man with more than 20 personalities living inside his body, one of which kidnaps three teenage girls. McAvoy reprised his role in 2019’s “Glass,” which also featured characters from 2000’s “Unbreakable.”
“The script laid it all out well, so it was clear to me from the start what I had to play,” the actor continued. “A few of the personalities took me a little longer. Patricia came very quickly, Dennis too, Hedwig took me a while.”
He added that after the first script read-through with the director and the rest of the cast, he was certain of everything. “I was sitting there panicking: ‘Oh my God, I have to do 15 characters in front of everyone in the room, including the big shots at Universal and producer Jason Blum, and they’re going to judge me, and I still haven’t figured out some of them.’ They came to me without any major problems.”
McAvoy also recalled the casting for the Harry Potter series. “I was auditioning for the part and they wanted me to wait for them to make a decision. I didn’t have a big CV at the time and they wanted me and the other actors to wait. They wanted to keep us waiting until they made a decision.”
The period was to last seven months, and the producers offered him a large sum to wait for their decision. “For me it was a fortune. I think it was £40,000 or so. I hadn’t done much acting before and I couldn’t do any gigs during that time.”
McAvoy turned down the studio offer at the urging of his agent. He took the role, which paid him £275 a week, but he doesn’t regret his decision. “It was a formative time for me. I learned a lot during that time,” he said.