During the long and unusually crowded casting process for Big, Andy García read for the role of Josh Baskin, the thirteen-year-old who magically becomes an adult. García was considered a serious contender, but one studio executive reportedly objected to spending the film's $18 million budget on a story in which 'a kid [grows] to be Puerto Rican.' The remark was both racially reductive and factually careless: García is Cuban-American, not Puerto Rican. The incident exposes the kind of blunt ethnic stereotyping that could still shape mainstream studio casting decisions in 1980s Hollywood, where executives often treated a character's presumed ethnicity as a commercial calculation rather than a creative choice. García did not get the part; after a succession of rejected or unavailable candidates—including Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Warren Beatty, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Modine, Albert Brooks, Jeff Bridges, and others—Tom Hanks ultimately replaced the initially cast Robert De Niro and delivered the career-defining performance that made Big a hit. The film's success makes the executive's objection especially revealing in retrospect: the studio's perceived risk in casting a nontraditional lead was overshadowed by Hanks's universal appeal and the film's $151.7 million worldwide gross.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Executive Who Rejected Andy García Because Josh Was Supposed to Be White
Big / 1980s
During the long and unusually crowded casting process for Big, Andy García read for the role of Josh Baskin, the thirteen-year-old who magically becomes an adult. García was considered a serious contender, but one studio executive reportedly objected to spending the film's $18 million budget on a story in which 'a kid [grows] to be Puerto Rican.' The remark was both racially reductive and factually careless: García is Cuban-American, not Puerto Rican. The incident exposes the kind of blunt ethnic stereotyping that could still shape mainstream studio casting decisions in 1980s Hollywood, where executives often treated a character's presumed ethnicity as a commercial calculation rather than a creative choice. García did not get the part; after a succession of rejected or unavailable candidates—including Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Warren Beatty, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Modine, Albert Brooks, Jeff Bridges, and others—Tom Hanks ultimately replaced the initially cast Robert De Niro and delivered the career-defining performance that made Big a hit. The film's success makes the executive's objection especially revealing in retrospect: the studio's perceived risk in casting a nontraditional lead was overshadowed by Hanks's universal appeal and the film's $151.7 million worldwide gross.
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