Jason Sudeikis is having a moment. Nearly 20 years after being hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live (yes, that was his original job), the first-time Emmy nominee is earning the highest praise of his career because of Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ series he co-created, which is about to launch its second season. But years before he first found fame at NBC’s Studio 8H, Sudeikis had a different dream: He wanted to be a Blue Man.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show, Sudeikis told host Stephen Colbert all about how he once blue himself in order to get in with the Smurf-esque group of performance artists. “It was when I was doing Second City in Las Vegas and I just fell in love with the show,” the 45-year-old actor said. “I made a lot of friends out there that were working out there and I went to go see it and was like, ‘I want to do that.’ And so I learned all the drumming parts and I had the opportunity to [audition].”
While the first audition did not require the full blue paint treatment, Sudeikis did make it far enough along in the audition process that he did eventually get painted.
“Every three days they would cut people. And I made it through the first three days and then the next three days, I got the chance to get bald and blue… But to see my face covered in completely one color was humbling. Because all the guys I was friends with had great, model faces that I didn’t realize how much I needed eyebrows and hair… I looked like a blue dodgeball. Like a peanut M&M. I looked at it and I was just like, ‘Oh, f*ck this gig!’… And I wasn’t a good enough drummer, and it’s like not knowing your lines in an audition. And I remember just sweating—sweating blue! Just dropping on the drum making little accent notes as I’m trying to [drum].”
The moral of the story? Sudeikis blue himself for nothing.
You can watch the full clip above.
