In a 2022 interview with the New York Occasions, Tom Hanks was requested about rumors that he and Aaron Sorkin determined that audiences would not need to see him snorting coke in “Charlie Wilson’s Struggle.” He responded by speaking about big spiders.

Within the 1933 model of “King Kong,” there’s a scene the place some adventurers are knocked off a log bridge by the large irate monkey. They fall right into a ravine and that is the top of them. There have been additional horrors to return within the unique lower. On the backside of the ravine, they’re attacked by big spiders. The director determined to cut it, nonetheless, as a result of audiences had been not frightened of Kong after seeing the ghastly creatures within the pit.

His idea is that there are specific issues, like big spiders in a film about an enormous gorilla or Tom Hanks taking Grade-A medicine, that may doubtlessly upstage the story. Would his character indulging in just a little nostril sweet have been that big spider second for “Charlie Wilson’s Struggle?” We’ll by no means know, however the film does have a scene with him sitting in a sizzling tub with topless girls whereas one other man rubs cocaine on his gums. Even this all feels just a little uncomfortable for a Tom Hanks character.

The attention-grabbing factor in regards to the rumor is what it says about Hanks’ public persona. Nobody felt scandalized by Uma Thurman doing a line within the lavatory in “Pulp Fiction,” or Leonardo DiCaprio snapping himself out of a Quaalude stupor with a jolt of the white stuff in “The Wolf of Wall Avenue,” or Al Pacino going face down in a mountain of coke in “Scarface.” With regards to an R-rated film starring Hanks, nonetheless, simply the mere concept of him taking the drug is sufficient to warrant questioning in an interview.