Nicolas Cage opened up about his cameo appearance in 1989’sNever on Tuesday,which involved a prosthetic nose and a Ferrari Testarossa, much to the frustration of his co-stars.Cage will soonentertain audiences as Dracula inRenfield, a horror comedy co-starring Nicholas Hoult as the eponymous underling of the famous vampire. To promote the film, Cage and Hoult answered a few fan questions, which resulted in Cage reminiscing about his uncredited role as a man in a red sports car forNever on Tuesday, a direct-to-video film about two guys who try to win over a woman when they all become stranded in the desert even though she’s a lesbian. Cage doesn’t recommend the whole film, but he did explain how his role as an eccentric driver who passes by the trio came about.RELATED:The Xenofiction Subgenre, ExplainedDuring a Reddit Q&A session, Cage explained that he accepted the role after an agreement with the director and the film’s financier to play the character for free if he was allowed to do what he wanted. “So it was a complete avant-garde experiment and of course I played a character who had a prosthetic nose which was very long and pointed. And I had this whole concept of this guy who had a very long nose and was having trouble meeting girls so his father bought him a Ferrari Testarossa to help him with that,” Cage wrote. “So I showed up on set with a prosthetic nose and a very high voice driving a Ferrari Testarossa and of course it was very frustrating for all the other actors. They like it now, apparently, but at the time it was like you can’t really fire me because that was the agreement. You said I could do whatever I wanted and he did and so that’s my favorite lesser-known performance.”
Despite their reluctance to fire Cage, the actor confirmed the filmmakers reprimanded him in one way. “No, it was somebody’s Ferrari and they took it away from me because I was driving it too fast,” Cage said when Hoult asked if he brought the Ferrari to the filming location himself. As for the inspiration for his colorful performance, Cage told Hoult, “Just sort of like a troubledlive-action version of Pinocchio.”
While it may not seem unusual for Cage to appear in a lesser-known direct-to-video movie early in his career, he had already starred in several notable productions in a lead role. These projects includedRaising Arizona,Vampire’s Kiss, and the Academy Award-winningMoonstruck, so it’s hard to say Cage was paying his dues by appearing inNever on Tuesday.
A more logical explanation for Cage’s seemingly random cameo inNever on Tuesdayis his penchant for stretching his acting abilities. Recently,Cage suggested he wasn’t interested in joining the MCU, expressing more interest in independent films likeTar. So, Cage was likely enticed by the opportunity to do whatever he wanted with his briefNever on Tuesdayrole without interference from even the director, despite the project being smaller than he was used to.
