All right, technically he reenacted it for Graham Norton, and Anna Kendrick was just a guest on the show as well, but #pageviews. We didn’t leave Anna Kendrick out of the headline when she, Liam Neeson, and Eddie Redmayne were discussing sexy cartoon characters on The Graham Norton Show, and we aren’t leaving her out of this headline either, especially since her response to Redmayne’s Bilbo Baggins impersonation is perfect.
In November, Eddie Redmayne mentioned on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he’d had disastrous auditions for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Hobbit, landing roles in neither. Graham Norton was able to get more information about what exactly went wrong with his Hobbit audition. He started by pointing out he missed out on the Harry Potter franchise as well: “There was a whole family of ginger people, and I thought somehow I might be part of that; it never happened.” He went on to describe his Hobbit audition.
Redmayne revealed that he actually did get an audition to play Bilbo Baggins, and he proceeded to reenact his ill-fated audition by scrunching up his body and doing a very strange voice.
We loved Anna Kendrick’s reaction, saying we always hear about the crazy things people do in auditions that get them a role, — like Jada Pinkett Smith putting a guy on a leash for her Gotham audition or T.J. Miller hanging out with an actual bear for Yogi Bear — but we almost never hear about the crazy auditions that completely backfired. We’d watch a whole movie of just those audition tapes.
