Nicolas Cage opened up about his cameo in 1989’s Never on Tuesday, which involved a prosthetic nose and a Ferrari Testarossa, much to the dismay of his co-stars.
Cage will soon play Dracula the Vampire in Rayfield, a horror-comedy co-starring Nicholas Hoult as the eponymous underling of the famous vampire. To promote the film, Cage and Holt answered some fan questions, which led Cage to recall his uncredited role as a man driving a red sports car in Never Tuesday, a film A straight-to-video movie about two guys trying to win when a woman is stranded in the desert, even though she’s a lesbian. Cage doesn’t recommend the entire movie, but he does explain how his role as the eccentric driver after a trio came to be.
During a Reddit QA session, Cage explained that he accepted the role after striking a deal with the director and the film’s financiers that he could play the role for free if he was allowed to do what he wanted. “So it was a whole avant-garde experiment, and of course I played a character with a long, pointed fake nose. And I had a whole concept of this guy with a long nose and having trouble meeting girls, so his dad gave He bought a Ferrari Testarossa to help him,” Cage wrote. “So I showed up on the set with a fake nose and a Ferrari Testarossa and it was loud, which of course made all the other actors very upset. Obviously, they love it now, but at the time it seemed like you couldn’t really fire me because that was the deal .You said I could do anything I wanted, and he did, so it’s my favorite little-known show.
Although they were reluctant to fire Cage, the actor confirmed that the filmmakers reprimanded him one way or another. “No, that was someone’s Ferrari and they took it away from me because I was driving too fast,” Cage said when Holt asked if he had personally brought the Ferrari to the shoot. As for the inspiration for his colorful show, Cage told Holt, “it’s kind of like a live-action version of Pinocchio.”
While it might not seem unusual for Cage to appear in a little-known direct-to-video film early in his career, he has already landed leading roles in several notable productions. Those projects include Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, and the Academy Award-winning Moonstruck, so it’s hard to argue that Cage’s Tuesday appearance on Never was paying his dues.
A more logical explanation for Cage’s seemingly random cameo on Tuesday’s Never Ending is that he likes to expand his acting capabilities. More recently, Cage said he’s not interested in joining the MCU, saying he’s more interested in standalone films like Tar. As such, Cage is likely drawn to the opportunity, and even though the project is smaller than he’s used to, he can do whatever he wants in Tuesday’s brief role without even the director’s intervention.