Publications
Partners
Los Angeles - Mark Wahlberg originally turned down Ted.
The 44-year-old actor has admitted he thought the idea for the film about a talking teddy bear sounded "absurd" when he first heard about it, and only accepted the role in the film - which has now been made into a sequel - after he got pressure from people around him.
Mark said: "When you hear about (Ted) for the first time, it sounds absurd. There's no good way to pitch it. It's ridiculous. So, I was like, 'Absolutely not!' It was one of those things where I was getting pressure from every angle.
"And then, when I talked to another agent about another project that I was producing and looking at one of their clients, they were like, 'I heard you're doing Ted.' I was like, 'What is this thing?'"
The Boogie Nights actor went on to read the script and find out more about the film and chose to take a risk.
Speaking to Collider.com, Mark added: "So, I read the first 35 pages of the script and put it down. It was the same experience that I had with Boogie Nights, where I said, 'This is either going to be brilliant, or it's going to be awful.'
"So then, it was a matter of sitting down with (the film's producer and writer) Seth (MacFarlane) and hearing what his vision was for it. And then, from that point, I saw the test and saw how the bear looked. I thought, 'You know, this could be good. Take a chance.'"
Watch the trailer here:
