Sylvester Stallone Was Rejected as an Extra for ‘The Godfather,’ Told He’s ‘Not the Type’

Samantha Bergeson

Apparently Francis Ford Coppola and “The Godfather” casting team could easily refuse Sylvester Stallone’s offer to star.

The Oscar winner revealed to Empire magazine that he was turned down to be an extra in the famous “Godfather” wedding scene, in the background among Marlon Brando, James Caan, Al Pacino, and Sylvester’s future “Rocky” love interest Talia Shire, who is director Coppola’s sister.

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“I went to Paramount, and said, ‘Can I be an extra in the wedding scene?,'” Stallone recalled. “They said, ‘Yeah, we don’t know if you’re the type of guy.’ I go, ‘I’m not the type? To play in the background, hiding behind a fucking wedding cake?'”

Now, during the 50th anniversary of “The Godfather,” Stallone is finally getting his “gangster shot” thanks to another Paramount property, Paramount+ series “Tulsa King” created by “Yellowstone” showrunner Taylor Sheridan. Stallone plays a mob capo in the series.

“Everything comes to those who wait,” Stallone stated, adding that Sheridan had in mind a “gangster going West” for the show concept. “He’s very hung up on the Western, but how does it manifest itself across the country? OK, take a gangster and put them right next to a cactus, and let the fun begin,” Stallone explained.

And perhaps Stallone skipping out on “The Godfather” was for good reason: Pacino previously said it took a “lifetime” for him to accept his fame from the trilogy.

“It’s hard to explain in today’s world — to explain who I was at that time and the bolt of lightning that it was,” Pacino told The New York Times. “I felt like, all of a sudden, some veil was lifted and all eyes were on me. Of course, they were on others in the film. But ‘The Godfather’ gave me a new identity that was hard for me to cope with. It’s a piece of work that I was so fortunate to be in. But it’s taken me a lifetime to accept it and move on. It’s not like I played Superman.”

Up next, Coppola is helming epic “Megalopolis” starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, and Aubrey Plaza. The official “Megalopolis” synopsis mysteriously reads: “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition, genius and conflicted love.”

Writer/director Coppola is said to be spending hundreds of millions of his own dollars to fund the epic futuristic feature, over 20 years in the making. The film will be shot in Georgia starting in November 2022 and will continue through March 2023.

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