Nicholas Hoult reflects on his near misses: ‘The Batman,’ ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ and ‘Mission Impossible 7’

Christopher Rosen
Updated ·4 min read
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Nicholas Hoult is poised to have a pretty successful spring. This weekend he has the title role in Universal’s gory R-rated comedy “Renfield” opposite Nicolas Cage as Dracula. Next month, he returns to Hulu’s comedy “The Great” for Season 3 fresh off his first-ever Emmy nomination for the show last year. He’s also starring in Robert Eggers’s next ensemble horror-thriller, “Nosferatu” opposite the likes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgard, Emma Corrin, and Willem Dafoe. But in an interview with The Guardian published this week, Hoult was in a reflective mood about the roles that got away.

Asked about how he felt during the early days of the pandemic, which Hoult called the longest stretch of time he’s had without work, the actor said it was largely fine in terms of his mental health. “I think because I was just home being dad, which was nice,” the actor, who has two young children with Bryanna Holly said. “And it’s easy in this industry to get FOMO – like this person’s doing this, and that’s coming out, and it’s all happening for them. You want to be in the mix. But nothing was shooting, so it was actually quite peaceful.”

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But after it was seemingly suggested by the interviewer that Hoult rarely experienced failure as an actor, he proved otherwise. “I screen-tested for ‘The Batman’ and didn’t get it. Screen-tested for ‘Top Gun,’ didn’t get it. Then I got the call from Tom Cruise: ‘Hey, how about Mission Impossible?’ OK. Got it. Then I had to drop out because I was already attached to do some more of ‘The Great,’” Hoult revealed.

Hoult’s play-by-play of his near-miss roles track with industry scuttlebutt and trade reporting. Back in 2018, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Hoult, Glen Powell, and Miles Teller were finalists for the role of Rooster in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the grown-up son of Goose (Anthony Edwards) from the original film. The part ended up going to Teller, with Powell joining the cast as another supporting character, the charismatic and egotistical Hangman. 

Then in 2019, The Hollywood Reporter detailed the process that led to Robert Pattinson winning the role of the Caped Crusader in Matt Reeves’s “The Batman.” For that film, the lead part came down to Pattinson and Hoult. “Reeves is said to have spent hours poring over the two actors’ work and met with them in April. Pattinson has far more name recognition than Hoult, but it was his work in ‘Good Time’ and ‘High Life,’ among others, that Reeves kept on coming back to,” wrote Borys Kit for THR. “Hoult, too, had impressed the deliberate filmmaker, known for his thought-provoking work on the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise, with ‘The Favourite’ this winter.”

Both Pattinson and Hoult even wore the Batsuit as part of their audition process, a final test of sorts that ended with the “Twilight” actor in the cape and cowl.

Hoult was cast in “Mission: Impossible” in early 2020 and he would’ve played the main villain in the franchise’s seventh and eighth films. But he was forced to drop out of the film later that same year. “Yeah, unfortunately, that was because of COVID and things shutting down for a while,” Hoult told THR in 2021. “And then productions clashed, so I couldn’t be a part of it anymore.” Hoult’s part was recast with Esai Morales.

Hoult next stars on “The Great” Season 3, which debuts May 12 on Hulu.

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