Although The Mummy, which came out in 1999, wasn’t Rachel Weisz’s first job as an actor, it was a part that propelled her international fame and stardom. She later made appearances in Sunshine, Beautiful Creatures, and Enemy at the Gates after playing Evelyn “Evie” Carnahan in the hugely popular action-adventure The Mummy film franchise.
Even though she went on to win an Oscar, no one would probably have ever heard of her if it weren’t for her character in The Mummy franchise. It wasn’t a major surprise when we saw her again in The Mummy Returns, which came out a few years after the original one. However, she didn’t appear in the third installment in 2008, which naturally led to a lot of speculation by fans and rumors as to why she might have left.
Weisz’s character Evie was portrayed by Maria Bello, who co-starred with Brendan Fraser, who played Rick O’Connell in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It was difficult not to notice that Weisz was not requested to reprise the part and that the character was instead performed by a completely different actor for any fans eager to see the character’s narrative wrap up in the sequel.
But the million-dollar question is why would an actress who launched her career by playing this role decide to stop doing so, especially given that she was well-known for portraying roles that were comparable to the one she played in The Mummy franchise?
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Rumors related to the situation
Many rumors are circulating the internet concerning the actress’s decision not to resume her part as Evie, but several people connected to the production have spoken about the matter.
According to the movie’s director Rob Cohen, Weisz reportedly turned down the role because she didn’t want to play a mother with an adult son. She would have been 37 at the time of the production, but Alex, her on-screen son, was 20.
To make the ages align exactly, Weisz would have needed to add a few years to her character’s age, but the costume team was fully prepared to give the actor any “old lady” makeup that might be needed.
Therefore, Cohen’s justification was illogical, and another notion suggested that Weisz didn’t like how the script for her role was written. It didn’t appear to make much sense, even then. Weisz made no comments at all, and Universal vigorously refuted the allegations.
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Reports related to this release at the time suggested that Weisz didn’t want to be away from her son, who was quite young, for as long as the filming required her to. This was a plausible explanation, but it didn’t make sense given that Weisz was working on two other films at the same time, so there must have been something else going on underneath the surface that the general public wasn’t aware of.
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The real reason why Rachel Weisz didn’t reprise her role as Evie
In 2008, the same year The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was released, Weisz finally resolved this issue and clarified the situation on her part. In an interview, she was questioned why she wasn’t a part of the film, and her response had nothing to do with how the script was written, the actor’s age, or any other factor of the sort.
She claimed the production schedule would have required Weisz to spend five months in China, and after wrapping up “The Brothers Bloom,” she was already supposed to start shooting another movie, so she never got a chance to read the script. She was unable to reprise her role due to a simple scheduling difficulty. Thus, it had to go to someone else.
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