Before he suited up to become Spider-Man, Tom Holland was trying to book another big gig, but it didn’t go exactly as he’d hoped. In an interview with Backstage per The Wrap, Holland remembered one of his most disastrous auditions, looking back at his experience trying to land a role in 2015’s Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
Holland, who recalled being about four or five auditions in, was reading for Finn, a role that later when to actor John Boyega, who went on to play the character in multiple Star Wars projects. “I remember doing this scene with this lady, bless her, and she was just a drone,” Holland said. “So I was doing all of this, like, ‘We gotta get back to the ship!’ And she was going, ‘Bleep, bloop bloop, bleep bloop.’
“I just couldn’t stop laughing,” he admitted. “I found it so funny. And I felt really bad, because she was trying really hard to be a convincing android or drone or whatever they’re called. Yeah, I obviously didn’t get the part. That wasn’t my best moment.”
Although he’s been through “quite a few” tough auditions, Holland has mastered a trick to make the process run more smoothly. “I have this little cheat that I used to do where I would get something really wrong in the first take in the room, so that the casting director would be like, ‘You should try and do it a little bit more like this,’” he said. “And then I would do it how I’d actually planned on doing it, and it would show them that I was really good at taking direction. That’s a little trick that I used to do, just to kind of show people that I was malleable and able to work with others.”
While Holland wasn’t cast in Star Wars, he’s done plenty well for himself since, playing Spider-Man/Peter Parker in five movies with a sixth on the way, and landing roles in films like Pixar’s Onward and Netflix’s The Devil All the Time. We can look forward to seeing Holland next in Chaos Walking, which premieres March 5, and in the upcoming Apple TV+ film from the Russo brothers, Cherry, which hits the the streaming platform March 12.
Where to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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Originally published at https://decider.com/2021/02/23/tom-holland-disastrous-star-wars-audition/ on .
