{"id":592478,"date":"2026-08-22T10:14:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/592478\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:14:22","slug":"shaquille-oneal-not-in-avengers-reveals-reason-marvel-said-no-cameo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/592478\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaquille O\u2019Neal Not in Avengers, Reveals Reason Marvel Said No Cameo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Best known as the lovably dim Andy Dwyer on NBC&#8217;s\u00a0Parks and Recreation, it was the lead role in Guardians of the Galaxy that turned Chris Pratt into a full-blown superstar. Aside from his transformation from goofy sidekick to\u00a0charismatic leading man, Pratt underwent a headline-making physical transformation to lead the rag-tag team of space misfits as Peter Quill.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For me it felt like a perfect fit right off the bat. I felt like at my very first audition that I nailed it, but, I was afraid that I wasn&#8217;t physically right for it because I was still pretty big,&#8221; Pratt admitted to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/11\/18\/chris-pratt-guardians-of-the-galaxy_n_4284398.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Huffington Post<\/a>. &#8220;I\u00a0mean, I knew he had my spirit\u2014I knew that my spirit was right. And I knew it sounded right, I just didn&#8217;t look right yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And director James Gunn at the time sort of agreed,\u00a0admitting, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t even want to see Chris at first. He was overweight at the time, and he seemed like a comedy guy, and he didn&#8217;t think he was the right person for the role. But he came in, and he was doing his audition, and 20 seconds into his audition I&#8217;m like, &#8216;That&#8217;s the guy.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, Pratt went on to lose\u00a060 pounds in six months, hilariously documenting the journey on Instagram (&#8220;Six months no beer. #GOTG Kinda douchy to post this but my brother made me&#8221; was the caption for one shirtless gym pic) and eventually landing endless magazine covers and headlines touting his impressive new bod.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a hilariously frumpy, doofy guy in\u00a0Parks and Rec, and he&#8217;s an incredibly kickass ripped guy in\u00a0Zero Dark Thirty\u00a0and that&#8217;s pretty awesome,&#8221; Feige said after the unexpected casting news was officially announced. &#8220;He&#8217;s going to need that in\u00a0Guardians. That&#8217;s a big range right there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Little did Pratt know back in the audition process that the Marvel team was looking way down the line, with Feige revealing, &#8220;We always cast for the movie we&#8217;re making, but we also have an eye on the future.\u00a0So when we were casting Chris Pratt, we needed the best Star-Lord, but at the same time, we said, &#8216;We need somebody who one day might go toe to toe with Robert Downey Jr.'&#8221; (Which they did in Infinity War.)<\/p>\n<p>While it&#8217;s hard to imagine anyone other than Pratt and his effortless charm and swagger playing Peter, Marvel had considered Eddie Redmayne, Joel Edgerton, Jack Huston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lee Pace for the role, with Pace ending up taking on the role of villain Ronan the Accuser. But the No. 1 contender after Pratt seemed to be\u00a0an It&#8217;s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star: Glenn Howerton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Best known as the lovably dim Andy Dwyer on NBC&#8217;s\u00a0Parks and Recreation, it was the lead role in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-592478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}