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Back in a 2021 interview with GQ, Damon revealed just how desperate he and Ben Affleck were to get their movie made. They wrote the script for themselves but needed a heavy-hitter to actually sell the project. That meant the role of the professor had to be flexible, very flexible.
“We wrote that part that Robin eventually took, we called it the Harvey Keitel part – looking for an actor that could get us some money because Ben and I wanted to star in the movie, and we knew we were worth nothing. So we needed to get somebody,” Damon admitted.
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The duo wasn’t picky. If a major actor liked the script, they’d tweak the role accordingly. The character’s backstory, age, even gender? All up for grabs. “We also knew we could adjust it if Morgan Freeman or somebody like Denzel Washington wanted to come in and play it, we could make that character from Roxbury and kind of explore the historic racial tension in Boston,” Damon explained during the same interview.
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And it wasn’t just about male actors. If the right actress raised her hand, they had a plan. “If Meryl Streep took the part, instead of a father/son relationship, there would be a mother-son relationship,” Damon told GQ. At that point, it wasn’t about creative vision. It was about survival.
The professor’s role, eventually played with a perfect mix of wisdom and vulnerability by Williams, was written intentionally open-ended. Damon recalled how they kept it simple: “We wrote it really open-ended. We wrote it saying, ‘Okay, [my and Robin’s characters are] from the same neighborhood, so they kind of understand each other.’” But the blueprint was always changeable.
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For a while, Good Will Hunting was just a solid script without the star power. Everything changed when Damon worked with Francis Ford Coppola on The Rainmaker. Coppola had just worked with Robin Williams on Jack, and vouched for the script. That connection sealed the deal.
Once Williams signed on, the chemistry between him and Damon lit up the screen. The father-son dynamic worked so well that it gave the film its emotional backbone, and gave Williams his first and only Academy Award.
And yet, in an alternate universe, it could’ve been Freeman. Or Washington. Or Streep. The idea of Good Will Hunting with a mother-son core might’ve worked. But luckily, Robin Williams walked in, sat on that park bench, and broke everyone’s hearts in the best way possible.
Affleck and Damon’s gamble paid off. They took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. And Williams made sure Good Will Hunting became unforgettable. But knowing they almost rewrote the role for Meryl? Yeah, the internet wasn’t the only one shook.
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