Howard Stern Reveals Jeff Goldblum Almost Played Him in 1997’s “Private Parts”: 'I Would Pay to See That'

The shock jock says the studio behind the biopic threatened replace him with Goldblum

Howard Stern says he was nearly replaced in role he was born to play: himself.

The radio host and self-proclaimed “King of All Media” famously played himself in Private Parts, the 1997 biopic based on his own 1993 book. But, Stern told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on the most recent episode of their podcast Smartless, the studio behind the film threatened at one point to replace him with none other than Jeff Goldblum.

During their conversation, Bateman jokingly asked Stern how many times he had to audition for his starring role.

Related: Howard Stern Brushes Off Jerry Seinfeld's 'Insulting' Comments, Says He 'Accepted' His Apology: 'No Big Deal'

“You wanna know something about Private Parts? Here’s the funny thing,” Stern replied. “I wrote the book and I had no clue when they said they wanna make a movie out of it — how am I gonna make a movie out of this thing?”

“I was involved in writing some of the scripts — we had other writers, this and that,” he continued. “There were 25 full drafts of this thing and each one was worse than the next.”

Stern went on to explain that he’d had a provision written into his contract giving him full approval of the adaptation’s script. “They couldn’t make the movie unless I had full script approval,” he said. “And I wrote half the scripts and they sucked!”

The shock jock told the Smartless hosts that the studio became so frustrated with his failure to approve a script that they threaten to cast Goldblum instead of him.

“They said, ‘Listen, this is crazy. The money that we're spending on these writers and you're not accepting any of these scripts. We're gonna hire Jeff Goldblum to play you since you won't do that,’ ” Stern recalled.

“I looked them in the eye, and I said, ‘You know what? I would pay to see that,’ ” Stern said. “ ‘I would love to see Jeff Goldblum as Howard Stern. I think it’d be terrific.’ ”

Of course, that never happened. Stern did play the adult version of himself in the film, with young actors Bobby Boriello, Michael Maccarone and Matthew Friedman playing him at ages 7, 12 and 16 respectively, alongside Paul Giamatti, Allison Janney, Kelly Bishop and Jenna Jameson. Private Parts went on to be number one film in North America during its opening weekend, and garnered positive reviews from critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

Related: Jeff Goldblum Says He's Clear with His Kids That They'll Need to Support Themselves: 'Row Your Own Boat'

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Stern’s performance, however, earned him a Razzie nomination for "Worst New Star" in March 1998.

On Smartless, Arnett agreed with Stern that it would be interesting to see Goldblum in the role. “That’d be so great to just shoot some scenes today with Jeff Goldblum,” he said. “Right? And just put it on the Internet.”

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