Hugh Jackman Says His X-Men Audition for Wolverine Was Just '20 Seconds Long'
Hugh Jackman is opening up about the audition process behind one of his most iconic film roles.
Speaking virtually during an appearance on The Tonight Show, the 51-year-old actor revealed to host Jimmy Fallon that his audition for the role of Wolverine in 2000's X-Men was "about 20 seconds long."
"When I walked into that room, I was pretty sure that I wasn't playing the role," Jackman began after Fallon showed a clip of the actor's audition for the role of the popular comic book character.
"It was a weird audition because Dougray Scott had the role and then he got caught up in Mission: Impossible 2 but everyone thought that would get sorted," he said, referring to the actor who was originally slated to take on the Wolverine mantle.
Jackman noted that the studio wanted a backup plan in case Scott could not appear as Wolverine, sharing, "It was like this Hail Mary to begin with, which is probably the best way to do an audition. You're going in like 'Eh.'"
"I think the entire audition was about 20 seconds," he added. "It wasn't much longer."
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Jackman first appeared onscreen as Wolverine 20 years ago and later starred as the character numerous times, including fellow X-Men movies, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past, as well as three Wolverine spin-offs: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine and Logan.
During his chat with the late-night host, Jackman also described how current Marvel Cinematic Universe head Kevin Feige, who was an assistant on X-Men at the time, drove him to the airport after the audition, before a friend in Hollywood told him how a comic book film like X-Men would fail.
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"In Hollywood, a mate of mine said to me, who was quite high up in the business, he said, 'Dude, the word on the street is not good about the movie. No one watches comic-book movies, they're like dead, that things gone forever. Book another movie before it comes out.'"
"No one understood it was the beginning of, like, Comic-Con was a 50,000-person thing. The internet was really just beginning," Jackman added. "No one really understood. What they thought was like, a subculture. Comic books was actually mainstream, but no one knew that."
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Jackman previously discussed his role during an appearance on Good Morning America, where he reflected on his time working on the hit movie franchise.
When asked by GMA co-host Michael Strahan who should take over Jackman's role as Wolverine in future iterations of the film series, the actor shouted, "Not Ryan Reynolds!," before Strahan could even finish his question.
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Jackman and Reynolds have been jokingly feuding for years. Earlier in Jackman's GMA appearance, he teased that Reynold's wife Blake Lively must be struggling in quarantine with the Deadpool actor.
"I check on Blake all the time, I just can’t imagine what this whole isolation has been like," Jackman said. "It’s been months in the same house with Ryan.
