Mark Wahlberg Went Through ‘Emotional Torture’ Working on ‘The Lovely Bones’
Mark Wahlberg once found himself starring in the 2009 film The Lovely Bones. The feature dealt with some extremely dark subject matter that the actor sometimes had difficulty grappling with.
Ryan Gosling was originally supposed to be in ‘The Lovely Bones’
The Lovely Bones was the film adaptation of the 2002 novel of the same name written by Alice Sebold. It told the story of Susie Salmon, who was a young girl murdered tragically. Played by Saoirse Ronan, Susie would watch how her murder affected her loved ones from the afterlife. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz ended up playing Susie’s parents.
Before Wahlberg was cast, however, Gosling was already briefly cast as the father. But according to the film’s producer Fran Walsh, Gosling didn’t feel he was right for the part despite the studio’s insistence.
“Ryan came to us two or three times and said, ‘I’m not the right person for this role. I’m too young,’” Walsh once told The Hollywood Reporter “And we said, ‘No, no, no. We can age you up. We can thin your hair.’ We were very keen.”
But it was soon discovered that Gosling’s instincts might have been right after all.
“It wasn’t until we were in preproduction and we had the cast there that it became increasingly clear: He was so uncomfortable moving forward, and we began to feel he was not right. It was our blindness, the desire to make it work no matter what,” she added.
Mark Wahlberg went through emotional torture doing ‘The Lovely Bones’
After Gosling’s departure from the project, Wahlberg was cast. Walsh shared it was both Wahlberg’s age and family history that made him a more ideal candidate for Susie’s father.
“He has seven or eight siblings, and he understands the chaos of family,” Walsh explained. “He really anchored the story. He gave a solidity to the storytelling from our point of view.”
But Wahlberg asserted that the film’s premise could be difficult to get through.
“I’ve put myself through emotional torture making this movie. It’s taken me to unimaginably dark places. The Lovely Bones is a chilling story, especially if you’re a parent,” Wahlberg once said according to Irish Central. “The murder of a child is the very last thing any mother or father ever wants to think about. I read about the terrible things that people do to children and I know that if anyone like them came near my kids, I’d kill them.”
It reached a point where the movie’s darkness caused Wahlberg’s resolve in the project to waver.
“I’ve never been daunted by a script. But as soon as I realized what this film involved, I really had to think about whether I wanted to go to that dark place every day during filming,” he said.
Mark Wahlberg was glad he did ‘Max Payne’ after ‘The Lovely Bones’
Soon after The Lovely Bones, Wahlberg starred in a much different project called Max Payne. The movie was an onscreen adaptation of the video game of the same name. Max Payne also centered around a plot about a murdered loved one. But this time, Wahlberg saw himself playing a cop exacting revenge on those who went after his family.
After doing Bones, Wahlberg felt “Max Payne was such a great release afterwards, because the other side of me would want to go out and wreak havoc on whoever was responsible, and I got to do that through this film,” he once told The Playlist.
