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Michael Cera detailed a past decision to skip out on acting in a major franchise.
Cera, 37, appeared on the Tuesday, June 24 episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast, where he discussed an aversion toward his own fame that developed after he starred in hits like Superbad and Juno in 2007 when he was still a teenager.
“I don’t think I have a franchise resistance. I think I know what you’re referring to,” Cera said, after host Louis Theroux asked if he has “resisted franchises.”
“I think I turned one down once. Yeah, I did. It was a Harry Potter one, Fantastic Beasts,” Cera added, referring to the Harry Potter spinoff film series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “I don’t even know if I was offered, I think I just declined to engage with it because — well, I think it would be like probably six years commitment or something. But also, like we were talking about earlier, I did sort of make a conscientious choice to limit my exposure a little bit, or just try and be a little more in control of it.
“And I felt like doing, especially little kids’ movies, I had a big fear of doing things that I would get too famous a little bit,” he said.
Warner Bros.
Cera did not specify what part he was offered to play in Warner Bros,’ Fantastic Beasts series, which followed Eddie Redmayne as English wizard Newt Scam ander and Jude Law as Potter series favorite Albus Dumbledore in the 1920s and 1930s. Three movies in that prequel franchise were released in 2016, 2018 and 2022, and all signs indicate Warner Bros. has shelved the remainder of the planned series in favor of re-adapting the Harry Potter books for an HBO series instead.
“I think that’s changed a little. I think I’ve outgrown that particular feeling,” Cera said of his past aversion to joining major, long-running movie franchises. “But I think that’s what that was at that time. If a franchise came along now and seemed interesting, I don’t think on the grounds of it being a franchise I would leave the office, storm out of the office or anything.”
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John Nacion/Variety via Getty
Cera, who has been acting since he was a child, admitted earlier in the podcast that growing famous at such a young age had a negative affect on him for a period of time and said he “would basically kind of go into fight of flight mode” when he was recognized in public.
“I was in Los Angeles, too, and I find Los Angeles is kind of extreme for that. I feel real spotlight syndrome in Los Angeles, even now,” he said. “You feel very exposed, and I was 19 and suddenly way more recognizable from one day to the next and it kind of shocked me or something. A lot of it was very positive, of course, and you meet great people, but then you also meet people who have no sense of boundaries or something and you’re being photographed and you’re self conscious. I liked my life better before that.”
