The actors usually know when they get a part well in advance of the public, but sometimes… they don’t. As is the case with Mark Ruffalo when he got the role of Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, for The Avengers film. In a recent episode of the Graham Norton Show on BBC, he explains what happened and the snafu that his pal, Robert Downey Jr., made at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con during the cast reveal.
I was there at Comic-Con for that announcement, and I vaguely remember being a bit confused when Ruffalo did come out after his name was called. And maybe I was a bit disappointed that Edward Norton wasn’t the one up there, but at the same time, I felt hopeful, because I knew Ruffalo to be a pretty darn good actor. Plus, the whole cast was there, so that was a minor issue in the grand scheme of that whole thing.
Check out the cast reveal here, and you can clearly hear Robert say “reprising”, however, I think he meant to say that the Hulk character was being reprised for the movie. You can also see the look on Ruffalo’s face, probably because he was still trying to get over the shock of getting the part:
I’m just glad that Mark Ruffalo did not disappoint in the movie (I did like Edward Norton’s take on the character, too), and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in Avengers: Age of Ultron.