‘Blade Runner’ financiers asked “Who the hell is Harrison Ford?”

Ridley Scott knew Harrison Ford would be someone special in Hollywood, despite others asking him decades ago.

During a retrospective video interview for GQ magazinethe filmmaker recently looked back at the casting for the 1982s Blade Runner.

At the time, Ford, who ultimately starred in the film, was not the household name he is today. Although the actor had already starred as Han Solo in George Lucas’ 1977 film Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Scott still had to do some convincing in terms of his casting.

“Harrison Ford was not a star. He had just finished flying in the Millennium Falcon Star Wars“, the executive explained. “I remember my finance people saying, ‘Who the hell is Harrison Ford?’ And I said, ‘You have to figure it out.’ So Harry became my leading man.”

Blade Runner follows Deckard (Ford), a Blade Runner who must pursue and finish off four escaped replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.

Elsewhere in GQ video, the Gladiator II filmmaker also opened up about his vision to “invent a new world” with the sci-fi film.

“I spent five months with a very good writer, Hampton Fancher, who had actually written a play adapted from (the novel) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? So I read the book and it felt like there were 90 stories in the first 20 pages and I thought, ‘It’s too complex,'” Scott recalled.

He continued: “But I sat down with Hampton and said, ‘You’ve written this beautiful story set in an apartment. It’s an internal story where a ‘hunter’ falls in love with his quarry. Love your cadence, love the rhythm in your dialogue, love your dialogue, love the idea. I want to see what happens when he walks out the door.’ And from that moment on, we just went boom.”

Blade Runner eventually turned into a franchise with a sequel and TV shows. Ford later reprized his role in 2017 Blade Runner 2049.