Perhaps there’s a multiverse path out there with Michael Fassbender as the star of Mad Max: Fury Road – if not for what the actor describes as “one of the worst auditions” of his career.
The actor recently sat down with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he opened up about a disastrous audition for George Miller’s critically acclaimed 2015 action epic. While Tom Hardy ultimately landed the role of Max Rockatansky, Fassbender revealed he had been given the chance to try out for the lead role – though things didn’t exactly go smoothly.
“Oh my God, that was one of the worst auditions,” Fassbender recalled. “That was back probably 12 years ago, yeah. But thankfully I haven’t had to audition in a while.”
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It wasn’t just the performance that was off to a rough start. Fassbender admitted he got hopelessly lost on the way to the audition, despite having printed directions with him in the car. “I got lost and I ended up getting to the audition almost like an hour late. And so I was not in the correct headspace.”
Once he finally arrived at Warner Bros., things didn’t get much better. “I was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and they were like, ‘Fine,’” Fassbender said.
What followed was an experience Fassbender clearly hasn’t forgotten. Miller had an acting coach in the room – an “excruciating” element of the audition.
“I’ve been classically trained, so, you know, I have my process. Obviously there’s an objective that the character has and activities that I’m going to play to get it. So I felt like, you know, you’re teaching your granny how to suck eggs here.”
The coach, as Fassbender amusingly recalled in an Australian accent, instructed him to physicalise a simple line: “‘I want you to say this phrase, get out of the room, but I want you to physicalise it, Michael.’ He was like, [stands up and uses a two-hand motion] ‘Get out of the room. Get out of the room.’”
Fassbender did as he was told—or so he thought. “So I was like, ‘Get out of the room! Get out of the room!’ They’re like, ‘No, you don’t have to do the hand thing.’ I do the hand thing. He was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘No, I was doing, get out of the room and physical…’ It was… it was so… I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
And that was the end of the road for Fassbender’s Fury Road prospects. “Obviously, I didn’t get the part,” he said. “Tom Hardy got the part, and deservedly so.”
Fassbender’s career certainly didn’t suffer. His many credits include the X-Men franchise (where he played Marvel character Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto), Steve Jobs, 12 Years a Slave, and, just released, the Steven Soderbergh-directed spy thriller Black Bag. Still, one has to wonder what Fassbender’s Max would have looked like – if he’d only shown them how to evacuate the room properly.
