Tom Hanks Told Myketi Williamson He Was ‘Killing’ His ‘Forrest Gump’ Audition

Mykelti Williamson and Tom Hanks knew they were a match in movie heaven from their first meeting.

Williamson, 68, opened up about making Forrest Gump with Hanks, 68, during the June 2 episode of the Still Here Hollywood podcast with Steve Kmetko. Williamson said he first heard about his eventual role as Forrest’s friend Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue when two of his acting students went in to audition for it.

“I coached each of them,” he explained, and neither of them got a callback. But Williamson thought he could play the part, so he asked his agent to set him up with an audition for the movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis. Williamson had begun acting as a child and had already appeared in movies like 1984’s Streets of Fire, 1989’s Miracle Mile and 1990’s The First Power. But his agent told him the message he got was “They don’t know who you are.”

Williamson told his agent, “If I can’t get in on this and two scrubs can,” that he had no “choice” but to get a new agent. He got called to go in on a Saturday, but was warned that he probably wouldn’t be “taken seriously” and the agency was just trying to keep him as a client. “When you go in there, kill them,” his agent said.

Williamson ultimately filmed a video audition with a casting assistant.  “The next thing I hear is Mr. Robert Zemeckis would like to match you up with Tom Hanks,” Williamson remembered. He had met Hanks before and worked with his wife, Rita Wilson, on the TV series Midnight Caller, which he had starred in. 

“So we go in. They match me up with Hanks,” Williamson remembered. “And Tommy’s sitting across the table from me, and he’s kicking me under the table like how much he liked it. He was just ‘Dude, you’re killing it.’ ”

“Finally, after we were done, he looked at me. He says, ‘Oh my gosh,’ ” Williamson remembered. “That was it. I got the job, and thank God I was persistent.”

Kmetko asked what Hanks was so happy about. “We had found each other,” Williamson said. “He could see the value in both of us and what that exchange was going to be… I think we both learned a tremendous amount from each other.”

“When kindred spirits find each other, it’s a, ‘Oh my gosh,’ ” he said about their instant bond. He, Hanks and Gary Sinise (who played Lieutenant Dan) “helped each other tremendously.” He said, “The work you saw us do, we all did together.”

Hanks and Williamson also worked together to find a different version of Forrest and Bubba’s relationship than what was written in the 1986 novel of the same name that the movie was based on. He compared the original version to the relationship between the Skipper and Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island.

“ ‘I’ll protect [you] little buddy,’ ” he said. “That was the version in the book. Big strong guy takes Forrest under his wing. I got your back, homie.” Instead, he said, “Hanks and I came up with the brothers thing.” The two Army buddies become good friends, and after Bubba dies in Vietnam, Forrest fulfills his friend’s dream of opening up a shrimp restaurant. 

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Since Forrest Gump — which went on to make over $670 million at the box office and won six Oscars, including Best Picture — Williamson has appeared in movies like Con Air and Ali and TV series like 24 and Justified. He also starred in 2016’s Fences with Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, reprising his role from the 2010 Broadway revival. He stars in the new film The Last Rodeo, released this May.