Jimmy Fallon and Robert Downey Jr. really wanted to star in a Nancy Meyers film, apparently

Jack Black has gotten a lot of flowers recently for how stone-cold sexy he was in the 2006 Nancy Meyers rom-com The Holiday. Black has only starred in that one rom-com, and, in this writer’s opinion, the number should be at least twice that. But according to Jimmy Fallon and Robert Downey Jr., we were almost deprived of this appearance—at least in their own minds, if not in anyone else’s.

Fallon almost nabbed Black’s role, he said on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show” (via The Hollywood Reporter), while Downey was up for the character that would eventually be played by Jude Law. Black and Law starred opposite Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz in the film, which is about two single best friends who swap houses and fall in love (it’s a classic, so you probably already know that).

Despite the fact that Black and Law’s roles had already been cast, Downey was convinced that he and Fallon would unseat them somehow, he said. “We both got called in just as seat-fillers and we saw each other,” Downey said of himself and Fallon’s short-lived Meyers experience. “She needed someone to read with the gals, and we’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us.’”

“I was in a hotel room with Robert Downey Jr., Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, and we read this script,” Fallon continued, picking up the story. “I said, ‘If Jack Black says no to this movie, I’m so in. I’ll do it for half his price.’”

Still, despite literally all signs pointing to the contrary (Downey’s British accent, for example, was apparently “the worst [Kate Winslet] has ever heard”), the two seat-fillers were not quite the “shoo-in”s they had thought.

“Nancy said to both of us at the same time, ‘This was great. It’s just not a perfect fit. It’s not a perfect fit,’” Downey said. But ah, what could have been! (We’re kidding. We’re very glad this didn’t happen.)