It’s hard to envision the 2000 holiday classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” without Jim Carrey.
But another Hollywood star is claiming he could possibly have landed the iconic role, if not for an allergy to the prosthetics used on set to transform him into a gruff, green menace.
John Stamos appeared on the “‘Tis The Grinch Holiday Podcast,” hosted by the Grinch himself (voiced by “Saturday Night Live” cast member James Austin Johnson), and spilled about the audition process.
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“Here’s an interesting fact you don’t know about me,” he started. “I was originally going to play you in the movie that Jim Carrey got. Did you know that?.”
“I went to the makeup test,” he explained. “And I was allergic to the, you know, all the prosthetics.”
The popular Christmas flick was released nearly 25 years ago, when Stamos was predominantly booking TV movies and other minor roles after experiencing an abundance of success on the sitcom “Full House.”
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Reports have suggested that both Jack Nicholson and Eddie Murphy were also considered for Carrey’s role.
In the past, Carrey, now 62, spoke candidly about how arduous of a process it was to become the Grinch. “Literally the makeup was like being buried alive every day,” he said on “The Graham Norton Show” in 2014.
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“The first day was 8.5 hours. And I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall, and I told [director] Ron Howard I couldn’t do the movie.” Carrey explained that Brian Grazer, Howard’s partner and co-founder of their production company, Imagine Entertainment, smoothed things over.
Grazer “came up with a brilliant idea, which was to hire a gentleman who is trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture. And so, that’s how I got through ‘The Grinch,'” Carrey admitted. The actor says he did the makeup 100 times over the course of filming.
Despite the taxing transformation process, Carrey can acknowledge the significance of his beloved Christmas movie. “When ‘The Grinch’ comes on every year, I sit back and I go, ‘Wow. Families are going to be hanging out and when the kids are old enough, they’ll see that,’ and they’ll go, ‘Wow, that guy’s cool,’” he recently told E! News.
