John Krasinski Talks About Losing the Captain America Role to Chris Evans

This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

John Krasinski is probably best known for playing mild-mannered prankster Jim Halpert in The Office, but little do some people know that he was actually very close to playing Captain America for the MCU. Of course, Krasinski lost the role to Chris Evans, but he’s actually pretty thankful that he didn’t get cast.

Fresh of the success of his directorial debut A Quiet Place, Krasinski tells Yahoo! Movies:

“That’s really interesting. I think A Quiet Place definitely wouldn’t exist. There are benefits, and Chris Evans seems to be having a wonderful time. I love Chris, I’ve been a friend of his for a while. Those movies are so much fun and I love watching them, I tell him I’m first in line to see his new movies. It’s that zen thing of let life take you where it may and I never would have been here if I had gotten Captain America. I never thought about that, you just broke my brain.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Krasinski isn’t interested in being part of the Marvel universe at all. Just recently, he’s expressed his interest in playing Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic if Marvel would like to bring the characters into Phase 4. A lot of fans also want his actual wife, Emily Blunt, to play his onscreen wife Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman.

We still don’t know what the MCU has in store for the Fox characters in their universe, but seeing that Marvel has reintroduced the Fantastic Four in the comics, it could pretty well be a sign that they are gearing up to have Marvel’s First Family return to the big screen. It has been widely known that the comics had been cancelled so they wouldn’t help promote Fox’s movies—that, and the sales for the title were pretty low.

We don’t know if John Krasinski will join the MCU anytime soon, but you can check out A Quiet Place now in theaters.