Robert Knepper Almost Didn’t Make it into Hitman!
Hitman made a respectable $21 million over the Thanksgiving weekend, could it be from all of us Robert Knepper fans?!?
Who would have guessed that he almost didn’t get the part, and it was only his role as T-Bag that got him in? Supposedly his first audition was bad and he sent in a tape afterward that got him another look. When director Xavier Gens saw it was T-Bag, he said Knepper had to be in the movie.
But Knepper didn’t even know it was a videogame!
“Fox eventually told me about the Hitman videogame, but I read the script and I honestly felt like I didn’t need to see the game,” said Knepper. “I didn’t need to know anything about the videogame because everything that I felt as an actor that I needed to know about the story was in the script. It had a great beginning, middle and end, it had a great conflict, a great hero, and a great anti-hero.”
Knepper loved that the script was filled with this charade and masking and keeps people guessing who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy.
“The script was a great mixture of everything and there are people told me, ‘Yeah, that is kind of like the videogame,’ and I know there are millions of people that play these games, but I personally have never done it. I didn’t immediately go, ‘Oh yeah, that is Hitman’ and then go play the videogame. I just had time to work on the damn dialect and get that thing going.”
When it comes to video games, Knepper said he’s already heard there was already a game in the works for Prison Break.
“I don’t think it’s quite done, but I heard that on the wind last year that they were trying to do it,” said Knepper. “You know the whole thing with an escape, they were working on a videogame where you plot your own escape from prison.”
And when it comes to his feelings on being in Prison Break and Hitman, Knepper is thrilled.
“I’m just a pig in shit about it right now about it because I’m just really happy, I’m particularly happy about Hitman because I was starting to feel like, ‘Oh no, I’m going to end up like that guy who gets famous from something and then they can’t shake it.’ People know you for that one character and that’s it,” said Knepper. “I’m like, ‘No, wait a minute, I’m an actor. I’ve spent 20 years playing different characters, and now I’m gonna be relegated to traveling the country and doing county fair circuits in the summertime.’ Then Hitman came along and I was like, ‘I’m going to go after that thing like I’m gonna die tomorrow, and if I don’t get it, I’m gonna’ go on.’ I ‘m so happy that I got it because even though he’s a bad guy, he’s just so totally different from T-Bag with the Russian accent and everything. It’s just amazing.”
Knepper also enjoyed his time opposite Timothy Olyphant, a fellow actor who also made a name for himself embracing a role on television. And if Hitman continues to score at the box office, more movies could follow for both actors.
Source: Kotaku
Tags: Robert Knepper, robert-knepper-hitmanRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Interviews, Robert Knepper
1 opinion for Robert Knepper Almost Didn’t Make it into Hitman!
Fiona
Dec 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I love his enthusaism. It’s funny the way he says “totally” all the time, lol.
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