A look inside Hollywood and the movies : LORNE’S WORLD : Phillip No Princely Role for Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe wants to go on record as saying he was not squeezed out of the sequel to “Wayne’s World,” as a press report elsewhere implied.

The actor, who played Benjamin in the original movie, said that after two read-throughs of the sequel script, it became clear to him that the role, completely changed to a new character named Phillip, wasn’t right for him. Lowe said after the second reading he told his manager, Bernie Brillstein, to inform the movie’s producer, Lorne Michaels, that “it’s just not going to work for me.”

Lowe added that “the next day I spoke with Lorne and we both agreed it would confuse the audience” for him to play an entirely different character than he had in the original, “so we parted ways completely amicably.”

It was his decision to walk, Lowe said. “I could be playing Phillip in ‘Wayne’s World 2’ and be on the set today if I had wanted.”

Michaels doesn’t dispute that, noting, “It would have been fine. But he felt it wasn’t right for him.” The producer also acknowledged that when the idea of Lowe playing an entirely new villain in the sequel “became problematic,” it made sense to cast a different actor.

Michaels confirmed that a deal is close to being completed with Christopher Walken to play the Phillip role.

“It was our intent for Rob to be in the picture,” said Michaels, from whose popular TV show “Saturday Night Live” the movie was originally born, and when things didn’t work out, “Rob was a really good sport about it.”

Lowe had an offer from Paramount to reprise his role of Benjamin in the sequel but had never completed negotiations on a deal. Therefore, suggestions that he would get paid off now that he was off the picture are not true.

Lowe said his next “big project” was going to be “the birth of my baby” in September. He also plans to produce and act in New Line’s courtroom comedy “Hung Jury.”