When James Brolin was first approached by producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan to play Ronald Reagan in their 2003 miniseries “The Reagans,” he said he wasn’t interested.
“Neil and Craig are old friends and I immediately said to them, ‘I guess everybody else turned it down,” Brolin recalls. “But they said, ‘No, we think you’re the guy.’ I wouldn’t even read it. I thought me playing Reagan was absurd.”
Zadan, who passed away in 2018, and Meron eventually convinced Brolin to read the first 20 pages of the script. “It just tickled me,” Brolin says. “I went, ‘Wow, this isn’t just saying some lines. There’s something more to this.’”
There certainly was. What Brolin nor anyone involved with the project could have predicted at the time was the political storm that “The Reagans” would create. The CBS series was still filming Reagan loyalists and GOP pundits attacked...
“Neil and Craig are old friends and I immediately said to them, ‘I guess everybody else turned it down,” Brolin recalls. “But they said, ‘No, we think you’re the guy.’ I wouldn’t even read it. I thought me playing Reagan was absurd.”
Zadan, who passed away in 2018, and Meron eventually convinced Brolin to read the first 20 pages of the script. “It just tickled me,” Brolin says. “I went, ‘Wow, this isn’t just saying some lines. There’s something more to this.’”
There certainly was. What Brolin nor anyone involved with the project could have predicted at the time was the political storm that “The Reagans” would create. The CBS series was still filming Reagan loyalists and GOP pundits attacked...
- 11/24/2020
- by Marc Malkin
- Variety Film + TV
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