How Kieran Culkin Absolutely Bombed His Star Wars Audition
Not everyone is cut right for intergalactic adventures.
Right now, with Succession still on the tip of everyone's tongue after an Internet-breaking finale, it's hard to believe that any of the actors who starred in the iconic show ever had trouble getting a role. However, even those in the cast who have had fairly long acting careers have had their fair share of rejection.
Kieran Culkin, who comes from a family of professional actors and got his first roles at the tender age of 6, has a number of rejection stories to tell. One of them involves the franchise that could have opened a lot more doors for him much earlier if only the audition hadn't ended in total disaster.
The actor shared his experience during the 2020 charity interview for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, which raises money to help actors in need who struggled during COVID. Among other things, Culkin recalled how he figured out the formula for audition success at a young age. He had to understand the material and feel right about it.
Obviously, that didn't happen with Star Wars. The problem is that there was nothing to work with in the original script.
“I auditioned for something where there weren’t lines, I think it was for, like, Star Wars, or something. And they were like: you’re not given the script, you know what to do when you get there. And I got there, I think I was 12-13-14, something like that, and they were like “Talk to us about Star Wars!” <...> And that bombed because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” the actor admitted.
Fortunately, the audition did not leave Culkin with any bitterness toward the franchise. After all, in the world of acting and casting, there are far too many different approaches to try to check all the boxes for everyone. And as a young teenager at the time, the actor had plenty of opportunities to further his career in different ways.
If you want to see 3-time Emmy nominee Kieran Culkin on screen and in action, you can stream all 4 seasons of Succession. The show is available on MAX.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation YouTube