It was even announced in the trades that Duncan would be a part of the Transformers cast, but the actor said it just didn’t happen. “Believe me, trust me when I say I wanted to do that movie. Trust me when I say I wanted to do Transformers. I’m a big kid at heart. I watched Transformers. That was one of my favorite cartoons. Optimus Prime was one of my favorite characters and to be head of a Navy Seal team going in and fighting these gigantic robots would have been perfect. But we just…I don’t know. It was oil and water. It just did not mix and I wanted it to. Me and Michael Bay talked, but we were on two different pages. I told him I was really sad because I said, ‘You know I’m coming to do good work.’ I said, ‘You already know that. You won’t have an actor that comes in high and that doesn’t know his work.’ I said, ‘You know that I’m coming to do good work.’ We just couldn’t get it together. Believe me, that was one I really wanted to do.”
Despite the fact he and Bay couldn’t come to terms on the role, Duncan says he’s still friendly with the director. “Oh yeah. Let me clear that right now: Michael is my action director. If he’s up for anything I’ll vote for him. When he wants me to do something, he can call me and say, ‘Michael, I have a project for you.’ I will drop everything to go work for Michael Bay because I know him. He’s the nicest guy, even though he hollers and he bitches and all that. He’s like a little Chihuahua (Duncan starts barking) and you’re like, ‘Here little dog. Come here. Come here.’ That’s what Michael Bay is.”
Duncan joked about Bay hollering at him. “Even when he did, I’d just looked at him and laugh. Even when Michael Bay would holler, I’d just look at him and laugh.”
