Tom Cruise Almost Played A Different Tropic Thunder Character Before Les Grossman

Robert Downey Jr. earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards for playing Kirk Lazarus/”Sergeant Lincoln Osiris” in “Tropic Thunder.” (Though it took 15 years and “Oppenheimer” for him to cinch the Oscar.)

RDJ’s performance as the self-involved Lazarus — an actor who takes his craft so seriously he’ll get surgical blackface — is indeed a highlight. It’s the most transgressive part of “Tropic Thunder,” but no matter how offensive it can look out of context, it’s executed with purpose in the film, not hate (except towards method actors).

Only one other part in “Tropic Thunder” rivals RDJ as Lazarus; Tom Cruise as short-tempered studio executive Les Grossman. Even more so than “Collateral” (which makes Cruise’s steely screen presence sinister), Cruise’s Grossman performance attests to his surprising range. In “Tropic Thunder,” Cruise’s movie star good looks are concealed beneath balding, burly makeup and he acts nothing like he usually does.

As Ethan Hunt or Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Cruise never loses his cool, while Grossman does nothing but flip out. Grossman also never smiles, whereas Cruise’s wide grin is his signature. Yet, it works. /Film readers agreed that Les Grossman is Tom Cruise’s best role.

In a 2008 New York Times interview, “Tropic Thunder” writer/director Ben Stiller (who also stars as Tugg Speedman) said he first offered Cruise a different part: Rick Peck, Speedman’s agent. Cruise declined, so the role was filled first by Stiller’s friend and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson. Then Wilson became unavailable in 2007 after a hospitalization, so Matthew McCounaghey played Peck in the final film (like Cruise and RDJ, he nails it).

“Tropic Thunder” is a Hollywood satire, but Peck is a flattering-enough depiction of agents. He’s overbearing and lecherous, yet he’s also dedicated to his clients. He literally goes to the ends of the Earth for Speedman.

Grossman, though, is anything but a flattering picture of a studio mogul. He’s verbally and physically abusive to lackeys, and is willing to let actors die to net insurance payouts. Thanks to the character, “Tropic Thunder” offers an especially vicious peek into the Hollywood sausage factory. (Deep-pocketed bosses, a class no-one likes? A historically easy satire target.)

As Stiller confirmed to Esquire, though, the “Tropic Thunder” script originally didn’t have Grossman or an equivalent character until Cruise came to him and said, “There’s no studio executive [in the script], and that would be really fun to be that guy.” From there, Cruise shaped the part; Grossman’s “fat hands” and two dance sequences were his requests.

Grossman breaks out the dance moves first to Flo Rida’s “Apple Bottom Jeans” — when trying to convince Peck to let Speedman die — and then to Ludacris’ “Get Back” in the film’s last scene. (In his Esquire interview, Stiller compared Cruise/Grossman’s dance moves to those of the gopher in “Caddyshack.”)

Cruise and McConaughey’s scenes together in “Tropic Thunder” are some of the movie’s best, so the film’s final casting worked out for the better. Plus, a “Tropic Thunder” without Les Grossman? It simply wouldn’t be as good.