Matt Damon died while starring alongside Hollywood’s rudest teddy bear in “Ted.”
Damon revealed in his GQ Men of the Year cover story, released Thursday, that he “talked about it” when it came to playing John Bennett opposite Seth MacFarlane’s Ted — a role that ultimately went to Mark Wahlberg.
He told the outlet that he doesn’t “want to live with regrets,” but he still can’t get over the fact that he passed on the hit 2012 comedy that spawned an entire franchise.
“I’ve never had this experience where I laughed so much while reading a script,” said Damon, 56, recalling that he even took the script to dinner and read parts of it out loud to his friends.
“And then I got too smart by half. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he added. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe the teddy bear is actually the best part.’
“So I overthought it and talked myself out of it,” he went on to admit.
The Odyssey actor explained that part of his regrets came from the fact that the film was filmed in his hometown of Boston, which would have given him the chance to spend more time with his father, who died in 2017 at the age of 74.
“I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, that would have been six months ago (at home),” Damon said.
Still, Damon said he thought “the right actor got the part,” adding that “Mark (Wahlberg) is great, and the movie is great, and I couldn’t have made it better.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Damon revealed that his wife, Luciana Barroso, suffered a brain aneurysm two years ago, shortly before the 2024 Oscars – where her film “Oppenheimer” won seven awards, including Best Picture.
Although the couple missed the ceremony itself, Barroso, 50, pushed herself to attend the afterparty because she “remembered” him missing the 2007 Oscars.
“She said to me, ‘This time we’re going out,'” Damon recalled. “And that was pretty heroic of him to do that and really meaningful.”
Meanwhile, Wahlberg, 55, previously admitted in 2015 that even he wasn’t immediately convinced by “Ted.”
“I was reluctant to even read the script because it’s about a teddy bear that comes to life. How do you present that?” he told Men’s Fitness at the time. “So I tried to offer it to my wife (to) see if she liked it.”
Wahlberg recalls telling his wife, Rhea Durham, about the “talking teddy bear” while they were on their way to the Oscars, to which she responded, “You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Ted” grossed more than $549 million worldwide and spawned a 2015 sequel, “Ted 2”; a prequel television series on Peacock; and an upcoming animated series set to premiere on the same streamer later this year.
Gn entert
