Brad Pitt’s role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is pretty much going to be iconic. But turns out, director Quentin Tarantino almost hired another A-lister for the part: Tom Cruise.

In a new interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Quentin said he at one point reached out to Tom to play Cliff Booth, a stunt double for Leonardo DiCaprio’s fading actor Rick Dalton.

“We talked about it,” he said. “He’s a great guy, and we really hit it off and it could happen on something else.”

Brad and Leo had never worked together before the movie.

“The reality of it was, people ask, ‘Was it always these two guys?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it’s the casting coup of the decade,’” Quentin explained. “You can’t count on that. They both have to respond to it, they both have to want to play the roles, they have to be available. There’s a whole lot of stuff there.”

He added, “The reality is, I had maybe eight different pairings of actors that could go together in a realistic way in this situation. Now, the ones that I got were definitely my number ones.”