Steven Spielberg has disclosed that Tom Selleck was the original choice to portray Indiana Jones, but contractual commitments to the television series Magnum P.I. prevented him from taking the role.
Spielberg and Lucas Settled on Selleck
Speaking on the IMO podcast hosted by Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, Spielberg recalled that he and George Lucas had already decided on Selleck while casting Raiders of the Lost Ark, the 1981 film that introduced the adventurer archaeologist.
“What happened was George and I had interviewed a lot of people to play Indiana Jones,” Spielberg said. “And we tested them and they came to George’s. He had a small office in Los Angeles across from Universal. And we tested a lot of actresses for Marion Ravenwood and a lot of actors, especially for Indiana Jones.”
Released in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark became the highest-grossing film of the year and launched the Indiana Jones franchise, which eventually grew to encompass five films released between 1981 and 2023. The series helped cement Harrison Ford as one of Hollywood's biggest stars and expanded into television series, novels, comics, video games, and theme park attractions.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker said that the actor who ultimately took on the role was central to whether the film would move ahead. “We both discovered and decided that Tom Selleck should play Indiana Jones,” Spielberg said. “He came in and he read for the part. Oh, he was good. His test was good. I loved it.”
Contractual Obligations Intervene
Spielberg and Raiders writer George Lucas were not aware at the time that Selleck was still contractually bound to CBS, the network behind Magnum P.I., which premiered in December 1980 and ran for eight seasons until 1988.
Magnum P.I. starred Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living in Hawaii. The series became one of the most popular programmes on US television during the early 1980s, consistently ranking among the top 20 shows in the Nielsen ratings during its first five seasons and reaching as high as third place during the 1982-83 television season.
“But there’s where the strings of destiny didn’t cross with Tom,” Spielberg said. “We wanted Tom. We gave Tom the part, and then he had, which we didn’t realise, an outstanding contract with CBS network to do Magnum P.I.”
He added that former Warner Bros executive Bob Daly and the network “immediately put Magnum P.I. into production, preempting Tom from being in Indiana Jones”.
In his 2024 memoir You Never Know, Selleck wrote about his audition with Spielberg and Lucas, and that his “only regret was that the ‘what-if’ was there from time to time”.
“On my drive home, I thought, boy, that was pretty cool, no pressure, and having a face-to-face with two people whose work I love,” he wrote about the audition. In 2014, Selleck told David Letterman that the offer was on the table for around a month, during which time CBS “said no”.
Harrison Ford Steps In
During their podcast interview, Obama asked Spielberg whether Selleck would have kept the moustache that became one of the actor’s trademarks during his run on Magnum P.I. “You know, he wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have let him have a moustache,” Spielberg quipped back, but added: “Maybe if the films were as successful, he could have demanded the moustache later and then George and I would have given [it], any time.”
Ford only entered the conversation afterwards when Lucas invited Spielberg to watch a rough cut of The Empire Strikes Back, released in 1980. “I went to the screening room, saw Empire Strikes Back, which I adored,” Spielberg said. He described pulling Lucas aside after the screening to ask: “‘George, what about that guy who plays Han Solo to play Indiana Jones?’”
“George looked at me funny and said, ‘Well, but he’s Han Solo.’ I said, ‘I know, but, you know, John Wayne might have been in the same Western forever, but he played different characters. You know, he could do more than one role.’”
Spielberg said Lucas later reconsidered the idea independently and sent the Raiders of the Lost Ark script to Ford. “About a week later, he called me up and said, ‘I’ve sent the script to Harrison,’” Spielberg said. “Harrison reads the script and he wants to do it. That was how it all began.”
Spielberg’s Latest Project
Spielberg’s latest sci-fi film Disclosure Day is set to be released on 12 June, and a trailer was released last week. The film stars Emily Blunt as a meteorologist who teams up with a whistleblower, played by Josh O’Connor, to uncover a government conspiracy theory. It also features Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell.
