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This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture-winning Boston-set crime epic. While The Departed was filled with acting titans, only one of them were nominated for their performance: Mark Wahlberg.
Speaking to BroBible’s Post Credit Podcast ahead of the release of his new buddy comedy Balls Up — now streaming on Prime Video — Mark Wahlberg recalled his initial reluctance to play Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam, as he says he was initially in talks to play another role in the project, presumably either of the ones eventually portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.
According to Wahlberg, he “kind of hung up” on Marty Scorsese when he offered him the role of Dignam, which wound up earning him his first, and thus far only, Academy Award nomination of his career (ur interview below has been queued up to begin when he starts talking about The Departed — the transcripton of his comments is below the video).
Mark Wahlberg recalls hanging up on Martin Scorsese when he offered him the role of Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam in The Departed
Eric Italiano, BroBible: This is the 20th anniversary of The Departed. I’ve seen it 25 times and just watched it again this past week. Your job in that film, to me, was to blow everyone off the screen at all times. How did Marty prime you for that?
Mark Wahlberg: “It wasn’t really that he primed me. I was originally in talks to play one of the other roles, and then the studio saw it differently. I got a call from Marty saying how excited he was that I agreed to play Sergeant Dignam — and I was like, I didn’t agree to play Sergeant Dignam. I kind of hung up on him. Then Ari Emanuel, the real Ari Gold, calls me and says, “You can’t hang up on Marty.” I said, “That’s not what we were talking about.” He said please just take another look. I was shooting Four Brothers in Toronto, and when I read it again from Dignam’s perspective, I said I’ll do this as long as he lets me improvise and just go at everybody. And Marty said that’s exactly what he wanted.
BroBible: How did you not cross the threshold of Dignam being too much — toeing that line of being as bombastic as he is but not being a caricature?
Mark: I’ve seen a lot of guys like that — cops and crooks in the neighborhood. I was most familiar with that world. It was kind of a cross between a couple of guys I knew and a little bit of Wojohowicz from Barney Miller — a comedy about detectives, Abe Vigoda, all those people. Great sitcom. I was just going to push it, and every time I did, Marty would always say, “Give him a little more.”
BroBible: When you read the script the first time, were you like — “He dies, he dies, he does… Oh, I’m the one who lives!”
Mark: Yeah, and I think, look, he was, he was a bad guy too, but he was gonna do the right thing by Queenan and the other guys.”
Wahlberg’s latest film, Balls Up — which also stars Molly Shannon, Benjamin Bratt, Daniela Melchior, Eric André, and Sacha Baron Cohen — is now streaming on Prime Video. You can check out the official trailer below.