David Alan Grier Reveals Why He Turned Down 'Forrest Gump' Role on 'Busy Tonight' - Watch!

David Alan Grier made an appearance on Busy Philipps‘ Busy Tonight on Monday (November 26) and revealed why he turned down the role of “Bubba Blue” in the beloved 1994 film, Forrest Gump.

“My manager sent me a script and she said, ‘I want you to read this.’ Uh, the lead character is a mentally challenged man. His best friend is mentally challenged. Now already I’m funky,” the 62-year-old actor recalled.

“I’m like, listen if I’m going to be playing a mentally challenged person, I got to be the lead, I can’t be no mentally challenged side kick,” David added. “It was Forrest Gump. So I read 20 pages and I said listen man, I’m not going in on this. He’s talking about shrimp the whole damn movie, no, nuh uh. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. So uh, she called me three times, she called me three times. She’s said, ‘The director loves you, Tom [Hanks], everybody.’ So that was lesson learned, it was all on me, and I screwed that up.”