Stanley Tucci says playing George Harvey in The Lovely Bones was "horrible"

Unlike The Devil Wears Prada and Julie & Julia, The Lovely Bones is one movie Stanley Tucci would not happily hurry back to set for. In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, the actor shares that he wouldn’t play George Harvey again, calling the experience “horrible.”

“It’s a wonderful movie, but it was a tough experience,” Tucci shares. “Simply because of the role.” In the 2009 film, Tucci’s character Harvey is a serial rapist and murderer, guilty of killing at least seven girls, who ultimately dies while attempting to lure a new victim. Among his victims is the film’s protagonist, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a 14-year-old-girl whose ghost watches over her family and her killer after her death, torn between wanting vengeance and wanting peace.

According to the actor, he initially tried to get out of playing the role (“which is crazy, because I needed a job,” he emphasizes). He even questioned director Peter Jackson on why exactly Jackson wanted him for the part.

“I was like, ‘Why do you want me?’ And he said, ‘Because you’re funny,’” Tucci shares. “And I thought, ‘Okay.’ But I understand what he was saying. I think what he meant was that I wouldn’t be too — not that I wouldn’t be serious about it, but that I wouldn’t be overly dramatic about it. That I would throw it away a bit. Which is what you have to do when you’re playing somebody who’s that awful, right?”

The Lovely Bones itself is based on a 2002 novel by author Alice Sebold, who has also written a memoir detailing her rape, which occurred in 1981 during her freshman year at Syracuse University. Initially, Sebold identified a man named Anthony Broadwater as her attacker. He was imprisoned for sixteen years before an Onondaga County state judge overturned his conviction in 2021, citing serious flaws in the case against him. With a real-life saga so bleak, it’s understandable that Tucci would much rather reprise the role of no-nonsense style guru Nigel.