Star Trek And Star Wars Offered Major Roles To An Alien Icon — And He Turned Them Both Down
It doesn't happen often in an actor's career when he gets offered a role in two of the biggest sci-fi franchises — "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" — and decides to pass on both. Yaphet Kotto, who played Parker, the chief engineer in Ridley Scott's iconic "Alien," however, belongs in that small club. Interestingly enough, as he recalled in an interview with Big Issue, he regrets one of those decisions but not the other.
Kotto admitted that turning down the role of Captain Picard (which famously went to Patrick Stewart) in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was a mistake. He said, "I think I made some wrong decisions in my life, man. I should have done that but I walked away. When you're making movies, you'd tend to say no to TV. It's like when you're in college and someone asks you to the high school dance. You say no." While filming "Alien" (whose xenomorph was inspired by nightmares), the actor was also offered the role of Captain Lando, which he had to pass on because he was already committed to doing a picture with Robert Redford.
"I was offered the part of Lando Calrissian in "The Empire Strikes Back" by Irvin Kershner, who had just directed me the year before in "Raid on Entebbe." [He] said, 'You're gonna stay in space.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'I'm doing "Empire Strikes Back" and you're going to be in it. I said, 'No, I'm not' (he laughs)," he told IGN. "I had to keep on a roll, and I said, 'If I do this, it'll be the end of me.' That's it! If I go from "Alien" to "The Empire Strikes Back" that's the end, you won't see me anymore. I've got to get back to Earth."
Even without those two major titles under his belt, Yaphet Kotto had an illustrious acting career
Some actors might have been moping for a lifetime after turning down such career-changing projects, but Yaphet Kotto wasn't one of them. He went to work and built an impressive filmography, appearing both on the big and small screens in various prestigious titles. Right after "Alien," he played an inmate alongside Robert Redford in "Brubaker," guest-starred in the original "The A-Team," and appeared in numerous movies and TV shows for several decades.
He was in Paul Michael Glaser's 1987 cult-classic sci-fi, "The Running Man," alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martin Brest's iconic 1988 buddy-comedy "Midnight Run" with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, and played Lt. Al Giardello in the accomplished police drama series "Homicide: Life on the Street" for seven seasons between 1993 and 1997. Those are just some of the highlights in his long and enduring career that has nearly a hundred credits to his name.
One of them was playing President Idi Amin Jr. in Irvin Kershner's 1976 television movie, "Raid on Entebbe," for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Special. He'd been a working actor for nearly six decades. Scoring a part in either "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" would've been a nice addition to his resume, but even without that, he undeniably built a worthy legacy in the history of cinema and television.