NEED TO KNOW
You might love the shrimp at Bubba Gump Shrimp, but their namesake has never tasted them.
Mykelti Williamson, who played Bubba in 1994’s Forrest Gump, opened up about his decision to never go to the restaurant on the June 2 episode of the Still Here Hollywood Podcast with Steve Kmetko. In the movie, when Tom Hanks’ title character enlists in the U.S. Army, he befriends Williamson’s Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue, who’s obsessed with shrimp. Though Bubba dies in combat, Forrest fulfills his promise to Bubba and opens Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.
In 1996, the first real-life Bubba Gump Shrimp Company opened and was a partnership between Paramount and the Rusty Pelican restaurant chain. During the podcast, Kmetko asked Williamson, 68, if he gets a free pass at Bubba Gump.
“I’ve never been,” he said. “You’re speaking of the restaurant? I’ve never been to one in my life.”
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Later in the episode, he explained, “The only reason I’ve never been was because I don’t feel I was properly invited. Sometimes, when you invite someone somewhere, it should be … highly considerate of what the possibilities could be with a union.” Meetings create “value” that should be considered, he said.
“But if if I invite you somewhere just to exploit you and buy you a meal and fly you out, well, that’s pimp game,” he explained. “That’s really not a high level of intelligence. That’s an appetite, is what that is. And I understand that. So I’ve never been to a restaurant because I’ve never been properly invited where I could participate in something that I helped create, because what I brought to the screen was not on the page. It wasn’t even close.”
Williamson explained that before he auditioned for Forrest Gump, he coached two students who auditioned for the role and didn’t get it. He had to fight to get an audition at all, but once director Robert Zemeckis saw his tape, he brought him in to read with Hanks, 68. The two, he said, were “kindred spirits” who took the relationship as it was written in the original 1986 novel and in the screenplay — which he compared to that of the Captain and Gilligan in Gilligan’s Island — and made it like “brothers.”
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He also explained some of the inspiration behind his famed shrimp monologue, in which he lists so many ways to eat shrimp. “There were really only five different kinds of shrimp in the script. Something like that. Five. Four or five. And so it wasn’t a big deal,” he explained. “But Bob Z and I got to talking and I said, ‘What do you think about Bubba just being just a shrimping fool?’ He said, ‘Sure. Why not?’ I said, ‘Okay. Just love shrimp.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ I said, ‘All right. I got it.’ ”
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“When I did the routine for for the character, I had about 40 [shrimp dishes] in my mind,” he said. During his first scene, he gave “15” types. The crew was “roaring” with laughter, and Zemeckis, 73, told him to keep it up and they worked together to “stitch” the shrimp throughout the movie, helping cement Williamson, Bubba and shrimp together forever.
Williamson said that fans often used to send shrimp to his table in restaurants, and he would meet fans to take a photo. It’s unclear if Hanks has visited one of the chain’s 21 locations in the United States (plus 12 more worldwide). Forrest Gump, meanwhile, made more than $670 million at the box office and won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Hanks.
