Colin Firth’s KINGSMAN Casting Was Contingent on Him Pulling off the Church Scene
After seeing Colin Firth kicking ass in Kingsman: The Secret Service, I can’t imagine anyone else as super agent Harry Hart. He was amazing, and you might be surprised to learn that there was a good chance that he might not have landed the role.
There's an incredibly insane action sequence in the film that featured Hart brutally kicking all kinds of ass in a church. The scene blew my mind with wonderfully colorful explosives. It was that scene that could have kept Firth from joining the movie. In a recent interview with MTV, director Matthew Vaughn explained that if he didn’t think Firth could pull off the sequence, he wouldn’t have cast him.
Vaughn gave the actor three months to train for the scene to prove that he could do it.
“I was like… this is a physical role and you’re going to have to train for the next six months. And if you’re not willing to do it, I’m not willing to give you the role. To be blunt, after three months, I’m going to test you. If I think you’re going to pull it off, then you’ve got the role. But if I think you don’t, you’re going to thank me for not casting you, because the worst thing [that] can happen is you look like an idiot doing this stuff in a church. Both of our credibility is gone at that point. So there’s no point in you blindly doing this movie thinking we’re going to pull off the action [and that church fight sequence], because we won’t. And to his credit, he said, ‘I get it. I’m going to train.’ And he trained like you wouldn’t believe. And he pulled it off.”
Hell yeah, he did! I really happy that all worked out for everyone. It's cool that Firth wanted the part so badly that he worked his ass off to get it.