Never has the famously ambitious, Academy Award winning filmmaker James Cameron been more... well, ambitious — and to great effect based on most of the reviews — than with his return to the world of Pandora in Avatar: The Way of Water, which is just the first of four planned follow-ups to his groundbreaking 2009 blockbuster. Yet, he also managed to raise some eyebrows in 1994 with his third collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger, True Lies — but not just for its wildly explosive sequences and star Jamie Lee Curtis’ steamy dance scene.
In this case, we are referring to the casting of Tom Arnold as Gib — the right-hand man to Schwarzenegger’s hero, Harry Tasker, and comic relief in what is already a wonderfully silly marital satire in addition to being a great spy movie. However, the comedian almost never got to play, arguably, the biggest role of his film career if not for his director being there to back him up. Find out why Cameron had to fight for Arnold’s honor and how he ended up winning him the part below.
Tom Arnold Was A Frequent Tabloid Target In The Early 1990s
Before he starred in movies like 1995’s Nine Months or served as one of the hosts of The Best Damn Sports Show Period in the early 2000s, Tom Arnold got his start in the late 1980s as a stand-up comedian. He became an instant household name, however, when — after getting a job as a writer for Roseanne and later joining the cast — he wed the hit sitcom’s eponymous star, Roseanne Barr, in 1990.
The marriage, which ended in divorce after four years, received a great deal of media attention, most due to some of Barr’s controversial behavior — which predates her tweets that led to her firing from the Roseanne revival — such as her bizarre rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1990. Tom Arnold was a recurring topic of discussion in tabloid journalism, which the executives at Twentieth Century Fox apparently took notice of based on how their reaction to James Cameron’s choice to play Gib in True Lies.
As Tom Arnold Explains It, James Cameron Insisted On Him Being Cast In The True Lies Role
On December 13, 2022, The Ringer released an episode of its podcast, The Big Picture, that covers the movies of James Cameron in the form of an oral history from the point of view of his most notable collaborators, including Tom Arnold. About 18 minutes in, the actor recalls how Fox told James Cameron that they were against the idea of casting him in True Lies and cited his tabloid reputation as why. According to what Arnold explains here, things changed — as did the actor’s career — after the filmmaker gave the studio an ultimatum:
Jim Cameron, to his credit -- this is the best thing anyone's ever done for me -- said, 'No, I don't read the tabloids, but I wrote this and he is the guy.' And, they're like, 'Well, we're sorry, Jim, but we cannot approve Tom Arnold for this movie.' And, Jim said, 'No, I'm sorry, 'cause I wanted to make the movie here at Fox. Now I'm gonna go down the street to Paramount.' They're like, 'OK, we'll give him a chance.'
I cannot think of a more generous thing for a filmmaker to do than to put the fate of an entire movie on the line for the sake of an actor who was not even the top-billed star. Needless to say, Arnold was cast as Gib in True Lies, earned a few good laughs for his witty banter with co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger, and went on to lead an action-comedy of his own in the title role of 1997’s feature-length adaptation of 1960s sitcom McHale’s Navy.
Years later, Arnold would say that he had a sequel to True Lies in the works, but the last we heard of that was more than a decade ago. Perhaps if Schwarzenegger and Curtis are game and he can get Cameron to take a break from the Avatar franchise for a bit (which seems unlikely), the return of Gib could be just around the corner.
