Pulp Fiction cast wish list reveals Quentin Tarantino movie was almost very different

It turns out John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson were second picks

The actors who Quentin Tarantino originally wanted for the main roles in Pulp Fiction have been revealed.

Tarantino’s crime film is one of the most acclaimed films of the 1990s, but if the director went with his first options, it would have looked very different.

John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson star in the film as Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, but according to the rough cast list (originally shared on Twitter by author Don Winslow and others), both actors were second choices for their respective roles.

When it came to jotting down who he wanted for the characters, Tarantino opted for Michael Madsen, with whom he’d already worked on Reservoir Dogs in 1992, and Laurence Fishburne.

He also wrote down Jackson for the role of Marcellus Wallace, a character who was ultimately played by his first choice – Ving Rhames.

Other actors in the running for Vincent were Alec Baldwin, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton, while he also earmarked Eddie Murphy for Jules.

Interestingly, Bruce Willis’ name is nowhere to be seen for Butch – in fact, the role was written for Matt Dillion. Other actors in contention were Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Aidan Quinn and Johnny Depp, who was also considered for restaurant robber Pumpkin (Tim Roth).

The roles played by Tarantino’s first choices, alongside Marcellus, were The Wolf (Harvey Keitel) and Koons (Christopher Walken).

Quentin Tarantino’s cast wish list for ‘Pulp Fiction’ (Twitter)

Other interesting points of note are that Uma Thurman, who played Mia Wallace, was not one of the 16 actors Tarantino had noted down, and that the role of Jody ended up being played by Rosanna Arquette, the sister of Tarantino’s first choice, Patricia.

For Mia, actors Tarantino had first envisioned included Virginia Madsen, Alfre Woodard, Bridget Fonda, Angela Bassett and Flashdance star Jennifer Beals.

Quentin Tarantino’s cast wish list for ‘Pulp Fiction’ (Twitter)

But in a 2020 interview, Tarantino, who recently scrapped plans to make his 10th – and final – film, shone a light on the backstory of the Gimp, the silent character dressed in nothing but leather bondage.

His brief moment in the 1994 film, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, arrives after Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) and Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) get captured by the owner and security guard of a pawn shop after their fight spills into their place of occupation. The Gimp is revealed to be a prisoner kept in their basement.

Speaking to Empire, Tarantino revealed his line of thought in relation to the Gimp’s origins.

“It doesn’t quite play this way in the movie, but in my mind when I wrote it, the Gimp’s dead. Butch knocked him out and then when he passed out, he hung himself. In terms of backstory, he was like a hitchhiker or somebody that they picked up seven years ago, and they trained him so he’s the perfect victim.”