PTA almost married Rachel?

whoa dude.

Super Genius Paul Thomas Anderson was offered the part of the groom in Rachel Getting Married. He did a table read and everything:

From Cigarettes and Red Vines:

in a semi-recent article with jonathan demme about “rachel getting married,” he mentioned the previous involvement of paul in the project.

Your movies have been progressive on the matter of race, often quite matter-of-factly. Here you have a mixed-race couple getting married and no one mentions it. Is this a deliberate gesture of post-racialism?

Jenny didn’t write it like that. In fact, Paul Thomas Anderson was offered the part of Sidney, and the second choice was Tunde. So that dimension might easily not have been there had Paul remotely been interested in playing a part in a movie. He came to a table reading, and he was fantastic, just adorable. But Paul passed on the part — he had something to do with a little movie he did called “There Will Be Blood” — and I met with just the best actors that the casting directors could find, and Tunde had the qualities that turned me on the most.