Why Ben Stiller And Will Smith Were Rejected For My Cousin Vinny

The 1992 comedy "My Cousin Vinny" is a perfect movie (this is my opinion, but also, it's basically a fact), but it could have been totally different — in that two Hollywood A-listers nearly played two of the main roles.

As the movie opens, New Yorkers and college students Bill Gambini and Stanley Rothenstein — played by Ralph Macchio and Mitchell Whitfield, respectively — accidentally steal a can of tuna from a convenience store called the Sac-O-Suds, and when the police corner them, they confess. What they don't know is that the clerk at the Sac-O-Suds was shot and killed right after they unwittingly shoplifted, so they end up confessing to the murder ... at which point Bill's cousin Vincent LaGuardia Gambini (Joe Pesci), a newly-minted lawyer, comes to their rescue. According to an oral history of the movie in Rolling Stone, Macchio and Whitfield were not the first choices for Bill and Stanley; the roles were nearly played by Ben Stiller and Will Smith.

"From Fox's perspective at that point in 1991, I had sort of plateaued," Macchio said. "I was, for lack of a better description, yesterday's news." Casting director David Rubin didn't really agree with Macchio's self-assessment, but he did they auditioned a bunch of people for both roles. "Ralph had presence and notoriety from 'The Karate Kid,' but we did go through a lot of kids," Rubin recalled. "There was a moment towards the end of our process where we had heard about a new kid who was just shooting a TV series called 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.' We auditioned Will Smith for Rothenstein. His talent was evident."

"Both Ben Stiller and Will Smith were on their list," Macchio confirmed; as for Whitfield, he found the entire situation completely hilarious. "It came down [to] me and Will Smith, which is funny because that's probably the last time I ever beat out Will Smith for a part," Whitfield joked.

For his part, Ben Stiller felt like he absolutely blew a huge opportunity. In March 2024, Stiller, who was speaking at a Q&A about his hit AppleTV+ series "Severance" (Stiller directs and executive produces but hasn't yet appeared on the show), said that "My Cousin Vinny" is a huge regret for him (via Collider). "I tanked my audition for 'My Cousin Vinny,'" Still said without getting into any specifics. "It still haunts me to this day."

Based on what David Rubin and Ralph Macchio said in the Rolling Stone history, though, Stiller's audition may not have been the deciding factor. The bigger issue they ran into was the idea of sending a young Black man, meaning Will Smith, and a young Jewish man into the South and watching them get arrested and scapegoated for a local murder simply because they're outsiders (Bill and Stan are eventually acquitted when Vinny proves they couldn't have possibly shot the clerk, but the townsfolk are more than happy to watch them hang before they're proven innocent). "It really became an honest conversation about how having an unjustly arrested young Black man in the deep South would change the dynamic of the narrative," Rubin told the outlet. "As talented as Will was, we made a determination that it was too intrusive to the central thesis of the movie.

"That was equally true with Ben Stiller," Macchio agreed. "A young, Jewish person in the South, all of a sudden you're moving the perspective of the movie, especially at that time." 

Again, I'm going to push the narrative that "My Cousin Vinny" is a perfect film, and the casting is a huge part of that. Throwing Joe Pesci into the deep American south as Vinny, a much more light-hearted take on Pesci's mobster roles in films like "Goodfellas," is basically genius; as David Rubin said in the oral history, "Vinny is an underdog who triumphs in spite of his limitations. He does expose his insecurities in those early scenes, but he covers it in a bravado. So you're rooting for him to tap into that bravado in the climactic scene. The natural confidence that Joe Pesci has was perfectly suited to that arc."

The film is full of great performances, from the late Fred Gwynne as the stern Judge Chamberlain Haller to Bruce McGill as the unexpectedly friendly town sheriff Dean Farley, but the cast member who makes the movie into an unforgettable classic is Marisa Tomei as Vinny's irascible yet brilliant fiancée Mona Lisa Vito. Clad in skintight outfits with a cloud of hairsprayed curls, Tomei's performance as Lisa is unmistakably iconic; try to imagine the ending of "My Cousin Vinny" without Tomei's legendary monologue about how a 1963 Pontiac Tempest could be confused for a Buick Skylark. You can't! The Rolling Stone story says that because Tomei wasn't particularly famous at the time, Pesci and the movie's creative team had to fight for her — it all worked out, Tomei won her first Oscar for the role, and with apologies to Will Smith and Ben Stiller, audiences were gifted a pitch-perfect film packed with outstanding performances.