Why Michael Cera Says He Turned Down ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Role

Michael Cera is opening up about why he tried to limit his fame earlier in his career, and how it actually led him to turn down a role in a major franchise.

The actor made a recent appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast, where the host asked him if he has purposefully “resisted franchises” when taking on projects.

“I don’t think I have a franchise resistance. I think I know what you’re referring to,” Cera responded. “I think I turned one down once. Yeah, I did. It was a Harry Potter one, Fantastic Beasts. I don’t even know if I was offered, I think I just declined to engage with it because — well, I think it would be like probably a six-year commitment or something. But also, like we were talking about earlier, I did sort of make a conscientious choice to limit my exposure a little bit, or just try and be a little more in control of it.”

“And I felt like doing, especially little kids’ movies, I had a big fear of doing things that I would get too famous a little bit,” he admitted. Cera rose to fame after starring in the hit 2007 films Superbad and Juno, as well as for his role in Arrested Development.

The Barbie star didn’t share which role in 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them he was in talks for, but the prequel to Harry Potter starred Eddie Redmayne as English wizard Newt Scamander. Two more films in the Fantastic Beasts franchise were also released in 2018 and 2022.

“I think that’s changed a little. I think I’ve outgrown that particular feeling,” Cera said of where he currently stands with fame and movie franchises. “But I think that’s what that was at that time. If a franchise came along now and seemed interesting, I don’t think on the grounds of it being a franchise I would leave the office, storm out of the office or anything.”

Elsewhere during his conversation with Louis Theroux, the actor confessed that he wasn’t “into attention really that much” and “didn’t know how to create boundaries in a healthy way,” especially during his early acting days as a teenager.

Cera said he would “react poorly sometimes to being recognized” by fans in public and would “go into fight or flight mode ’cause I had some kind of PTSD from it.”

“I was in Los Angeles, too, and I find Los Angeles is kind of extreme for that. I feel real spotlight syndrome in Los Angeles, even now,” he explained. “You feel very exposed, and I was 19 and suddenly way more recognizable from one day to the next, and it kind of shocked me or something. A lot of it was very positive, of course, and you meet great people, but then you also meet people who have no sense of boundaries or something and you’re being photographed and you’re self-conscious. I liked my life better before that.”