By the early 2000s, Tracy Morgan’s film career was on the upswing after the comedian’s brief appearances in movies like Half Baked, How High, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Following his departure from Saturday Night Live in 2003, Morgan would play more prominent roles in The Longest Yard, Little Man, First Sunday, and Cop Out, alongside Bruce Willis. Leading up to that, though, he actually got to work with Jim Carrey on something that nobody ended up seeing. The strangest part of all was that Morgan supposedly didn’t even remember the collaboration.
2004 saw the release of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film stars Kate Winslet as a woman who undergoes a procedure in order to erase the memories of her ex-boyfriend, Joel (played by Carrey). When Joel learns about what she’s done, he decides to have his memories of her erased as well. In the process, he begins revisiting the positive memories of their time together and no longer wishes to move forward with the procedure.
During a 2019 retrospective with Vanity Fair, Carrey and Gondry revealed that Morgan had shot some flashback scenes for the film that they ultimately didn’t use in the final cut. “He’s a comedic genius,” Gondry said at the time. “Genius!” Carrey emphasized in agreement. Morgan was meant to appear as Carrey’s neighbor at one point, but according to Gondry, “the reality is he was Tracy Morgan,” which they felt would’ve been too distracting for people. Ironically, a rep for Morgan claimed he didn’t remember acting in the movie.
Another person who didn’t make the final cut was Ellen Pompeo. The actress shot one scene where she played Carrey’s character’s ex-girlfriend, Naomi. “We actually had really good chemistry. It was odd,” Carrey said of the scrapped segment. “It was almost too much. If it had been in the movie, it’s competing [with Winslet’s character].”
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