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Eddie Redmayne’s Audition To Play A ‘Harry Potter’ Villain Went Very Wrong

By Gregory Wakeman
Published on: 16:13 PST, Oct 25, 2016

We’re just a few weeks away from seeing Eddie Redmayne’s debut in the Harry Potter universe, as he takes on the leading role of Newt Scamander in the spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.

However, if history had gone another way, Redmayne would have already appeared for the first time in a big-screen Harry Potter tale, as the Oscar-winning actor has revealed that he previously auditioned to play the character of Tom Riddle in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, who goes on to become the villain Voldemort.

But Eddie Redmayne’s audition obviously went rather badly, because not only did he not get the part but he didn’t even receive the courtesy of a call-back to inform him that he’d missed out. Redmayne made this rather embarrassing admission to Empire, via Digital Spy, when he was quizzed about his past links to the Harry Potter universe.

“I actually auditioned to play Tom Riddle while I was at university,” Redmayne freely admitted. “I properly failed and didn’t get a callback.”

What made it even worse for Eddie Redmayne was that several of his close friends from the acting community actually did get roles in the Harry Potter franchise, which then went on to kickstart their careers. Redmayne recalled in the same interview, “A lot of my friends, like Domhnall Gleeson and Rob Pattinson, got their Harry Potter moment, but I never got mine.”

Before being cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight series, which went on to make him a global phenomenon and teen heartthrob, Robert Pattinson portrayed Cedric Diggory in both Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Meanwhile, Domhnall Gleeson, who has achieved notoriety for his performances as General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ex Machina in recent years, previously portrayed Ron Weasley’s older brother Bill in the Harry Potter film franchise.

In fact, Eddie Redmayne admitted that it was Domhnall Gleeson’s part that he was particularly envious of, because, due to the color of his red locks, he always thought that he’d make a great addition to the Weasley family. “Over the years,” Redmayne noted. “I always hoped I might be cast as a member of the Weasley family – I’m color blind, but I’ve always been told there’s a tinge of red to my hair – but unfortunately not.”

This isn’t the first time that Eddie Redmayne has opened up about an audition gone wrong. Last year, he hilariously revealed while on The Graham Norton Show that he was lucky enough to get an audition in front of Peter Jackson for the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.

However, his audition immediately went south when he proceeded to scrunch up his body and use a very peculiar accent. Once again, Redmayne confessed that his terrible audition didn’t even result in a callback, while the role eventually went to Martin Freeman.

But that wasn’t the only high-profile role that Eddie Redmayne pursued only to make a fool out of himself in the auditioning process. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast back in November 2014, Redmayne revealed that his audition for a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens was also laughably inept.

“My Star Wars audition was pretty catastrophically bad,” Redmayne admitted, via the Independent. “There’s this wonderful casting director called Nina Gold, who I absolutely love. I went in and did this scene and after seven times of trying to play a baddie, [Gold] was like, ‘Got anything else, Eddie?’ I said, ‘Okay, that’s a childhood dream crushed’.”

But I’m sure that the 2015 Best Actor Academy Award he received for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything, which he followed up with another nomination in 2016 for his work in The Danish Girl, helped to soften the blow.

[Featured Image by Warner Bros]

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