Josh Gad Almost Turned Down ‘Book of Mormon’
Josh Gad had something of a career going in the early 2000s — a guest spot on ER here, replacing Dan Fogler in a Broadway show there. Not yet a household name, but for an up-and-comer, not bad. Still, who was Josh Gad to turn down a potential role in a new stage musical from the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker?
But when he got his mitts on a script for Book of Mormon, he couldn’t figure out any way he could take the role of Elder Cunningham, one of the musical’s two leads. Gad told Seth Meyers this week that his initial reaction was, “I cannot do this.”
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His first impressions were good. Gad listened to a demo of the songs, tapping his toes to ‘Hello!’ and ‘Two By Two.’ “And I'm like, ‘These are so fun,’” he said. “Then it gets to a little song called ‘Hasa Diga Eebowai,’ which I'm not going to translate on national television.” (If you’re curious what Gad’s fuss is all about, check out the song for yourself.)
When Gad got a load of ‘Hasa Diga Eebowai’ and its ‘Eff you’ message to a certain deity, he picked up his phone and called his agent. He just couldn’t see a way forward on the musical.
“It's Trey and Matt,” exclaimed the agent. “I mean, of course it's going to be crazy. Of course you can do it.”
But the agent hadn’t listened to the music yet. Once Gad had him check out the offending track, the rep changed his tune. “He goes, ‘You cannot do this.’”
Against his better judgment, Gad went ahead and accepted the role. At the first reading in front of a live audience, “I remember white knuckling it the first time we did ‘Hasa Diga.’ And I heard one person go (shocked gasp noise). Silence. And I'm like, ‘We're dead.’”
But then, another audience member laughed out loud at the song’s sacriligious punchline. “And it gave permission to everybody to start laughing,” Gad said. “And from that point on, I never looked back.”
Even after the laughing reception during the readthroughs, the show’s cast didn’t foresee a long life for Book of Mormon. “We all thought it was going to run for three months,” he confessed. “We thought that, like, South Park fans were going to come, but I did not think there was a world in which it became Mamma Mia!”
Fifteen years later, tourists are still lined up on Broadway for their chance to catch Book of Mormon.
Gad can’t say that he called that one. “Joke's on me, guys.”
