Corey Feldman recently appeared on Billy Corgan’s “Magnificent Others” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly) and claimed that Johnny Depp got him fired off “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” Lasse Hallström’s 1993 drama about a grocery store clerk and his dysfunctional family. Feldman said he got cast in the role of Arnie, the disabled younger brother of Depp’s Gilbert. Leonardo DiCaprio ultimately played the role on screen.
“I was actually cast to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s role,” he said. “I never saw the film because I’m still bitter. Bitter leaf in that one. But yes, I was originally cast for that role.”
“Did they push you out?” Corgan asked.
“Johnny Depp,” Feldman answered. “He was cast after I was, and apparently whispered into the producers’ ear that he wasn’t fond of me, and thought — he said that I was a junkie and that he didn’t work with junkies. And this is the first time I’ve ever telling this story, so I’m sure I’m gonna get hung by this one.”
Feldman, who was already a popular star at the time thanks to roles in “The Goonies” and “Stand by Me,” insisted that he was sober at the time, explaining: “I had just gotten sober. I had just gotten out of rehab. I had turned my life around, and, in fact, was trying to help River [Phoenix] at the time, who [Depp] was running with at the time, as we all know. As you can imagine, there was a bit of a thorn in the side on that one. And, had I not been pushed out and done that role, who knows what would have happened from that point forward.”
DiCaprio earned critical acclaim for his performance in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and his first Oscar nomination, to which Feldman said: “There was a bitter tea there. But that said, you don’t hang on those, you get past ’em.”
Variety has reached out to Depp’s representatives for comment.
According to Feldman, the role of Arnie was the first of two times he lost out on a role to DiCaprio. The other was “Titanic,” although he was never in serious contention for James Cameron’s blockbuster.
“Ironically, just a couple years later, I also was up for ‘Titanic,’ so there was kind of a double banger with Leo,” he said. “But that was OK, because that one I wasn’t as close. I was up for it, I read for it, I know that I was in the contention somewhere.”
Listen to Feldman’s full interview on the “Magnificent Others” podcast below.
