According to Mel Gibson, Martin Scorsese wanted him to star in The Last Temptation of Christ, but the Lethal Weapon actor wasn’t interested.

“Interestingly enough, I was in a hotel room in the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead from it. I ate a bad oyster in London and I was dying in a hotel room and I couldn’t even leave. It was the worst,” Gibson said on the Joe Rogen Experience podcast. “While I was there, Scorsese calls the room and says, ‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’ I go and I talk to Martin and he’s in his room and all the windows, the screens, he’s drawn on. He’s got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room. He’s talking to me about the ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ and he wants me to play Jesus and I said, ‘Wow. I’m not doing that.’“

Although Gibson didn’t want to take part in the movie, he did praise Willem Dafoe for his performance. “He did something that I think nobody else did and I think he pulled it off because I totally believed it,” Gibson said. “He emptied himself out. He invited something else in. He meditated and let Christ in.” The Last Temptation of Christ, which found the biblical figure struggling with lust, fear, and doubt, came under fire from Christian groups upon release, who went so far as to claim the movie was blasphemy.

Gibson went on to direct his own Jesus Christ film, The Passion of the Christ, and is currently working on a sequel that he hopes to shoot next year.

Our next helping of Gibson will arrive with Flight Risk, an action thriller he directed from a script by Jared Rosenberg. The film stars Mark Wahlberg as a pilot transporting an Air Marshall (Michelle Dockery) who is accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace) to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar, and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem. The film will hit theaters on January 24th.

The post Mel Gibson says Martin Scorsese wanted him to play Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ appeared first on JoBlo.