David Oyelowo recalls getting shut down mid-audition: 'This isn't working'
Fortunately for the "Bass Reeves" star, fellow actors Jon Hamm, Nicholas Galitzine, and Matt Bomer chimed in with their own audition horror stories.
Every actor has a least one embarrassing audition story; fortunately for David Oyelowo, he found the perfect audience to commiserate with about his.
During a recent actors' roundtable for the Hollywood Reporter, the Lawmen: Bass Reeves and Selma star discussed the highs and lows of the audition process with fellow leading men Jon Hamm, Nicholas Galitzine, Matt Bomer, Callum Turner, and Clive Owen.
Recalling a particularly brutal tryout, Oyelowo said, "I once auditioned for a director, who, in the middle of the audition, said, 'This isn’t working.' That was pretty bad."
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
David OyelowoHamm was quick to offer comfort, pointing to Oyelowo's current success: "But also, turns out it was working. And it remains working."
Recounting a deflating experience of his own, the Mad Men alum said, "In a similar vein, I had a head of this television network tell my representatives that 'Jon Hamm will never be a television star.'"
He added that while he only learned about the comment much later, it came after a series of unsuccessful auditions.
"I had auditioned for this person and this network over and over and over again, as one does, and for whatever reason didn't get the part and didn't get the part and didn't get the part," Hamm said. "It would always come down to the last two: me and the guy who's going to get it."
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Although Bomer and Galitzine encouraged Hamm to name the executive, the actor simply said, "He's no longer at the head of that network."
Without hearing more, Bomer remarked, "I know exactly who it is."
Jon Kopaloff/Getty; Amy Sussman/Getty; Frazer Harrison/Getty
Nicholas Galitzine , Jon Hamm, and Matt BomerThe audition horror stories didn't stop there — Galitzine chimed in with his own mortifying memory.
"When I went in to audition for young Tarzan, there were no lines, and I was told that I had to pretend that I had an orange that someone was trying to steal from me and I had to guard it," he said. "And you know when you don't go for something entirely, and it just seems very feeble and pathetic and wrong?"
He added, "That is a moment that keeps me awake at night. I think about it a lot."
Later in the conversation, Hamm recalled his attempt to land a role in Miracle, the 2004 sports drama about the U.S. men's ice hockey team, whose 1980 gold medal victory at the Winter Olympics was famously dubbed a "miracle on ice."
"I love ice hockey," Hamm said. "Cannot play ice hockey, however, which is a very specific skill set. I can skate a little bit. I can go forward and backward, I can turn, can't really stop. But who needs that? That's what the boards are for."
Unfortunately for Hamm, skating skills turned out to be a key requirement for the role. "I went to audition for this thing and it was absolutely humiliating," he confessed. "I've learned now that I should take that skill off my résumé. The movie ended up being great — one of my favorite sports movies of all time."
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