Roles that actors auditioned for
Roles that actors auditioned for
#1Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 1:30pm
Hopefully this thread wont turn into a "bash the performer" game but. . . what roles did actors audition for that ultimately went to other performers.
Carolee Carmello: Mother in Ragtime
Susie Mosher: Madame Morrible in Wicked
''With the number of people I ignore, I'm lucky I work at all in this town'' - Helena Bonham Carter
Updated On: 5/27/12 at 01:30 PM
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#2Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 1:59pm
Oh jeeze. These threads are pointless.
Do you realize how many actors audition for a role and don't get it?! Hundreds.
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
bwaylvsong
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#2Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 2:26pm
^Sometimes thousands!
Most actors who aren't stars audition for everything they're right for, which means that for every audition one books, there are usually hundreds one doesn't.
#3Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 4:21pm
I've auditioned for Wicked and Mary Poppins and made it to the final dance call for both.......
Ultimately those roles went to other performers. 
philly03
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/20/07
#4Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 4:32pm
Laura Osnes auditioned for WONDERLAND, but Frank Wildhorn thought she was too young (she was 24 I think at the time, for a role with a 10 year old daughter!) and put her in Bonnie & Clyde instead. The rest is Tony-nominated history.
Would love to hear Laura sing "Finding Wonderland" though!
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#5Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 4:34pm
I think everyone knows there are a lot of candidates for every role. So I assume jamiekennywicked is looking for auditions that inspire us to wonder "what might have been":
Betty Buckley auditioned for Nora in A DOLL'S LIFE.
Now I thought Betsy Jocelyn was fine in the part and by no means the cause of the show's failure. But one can daydream about what the show could have been had Grossman, Comden and Green been writing for a different voice. Doing so isn't any sillier than most of the discussions we have here, like guessing who will win Tony Awards months before the theatrical season even starts.
And I doubt she actually auditioned, but what if Patti LuPone's negotiations to play the Witch in INTO THE WOODS hadn't fallen through? Would we have still ended up with two of Sondheim's most touching ballads? Or would the witch have been given more power numbers?
#6Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 5:14pm
Patti LuPone auditioned for Dot in SUNDAY. Before the audition, Sondheim told her "Patti, no belting" ..... we know how that one turned out.
Updated On: 5/27/12 at 05:14 PM
AwesomeDanny
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/30/09
#7Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 5:19pmThat's strange... Bernadette Peters belted the whole score of Sunday, so I don't see why Patti shouldn't.
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#8Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 5:35pm^^^^Apples and oranges, apples and oranges.
bwaylvsong
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#9Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 5:37pm^Bernadette's belt has a softer tone than Patti's.
#10Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 7:59pmAgreed Patt's belt can be heard from the back any theater without a microphone and sound just as loud as Bernadette's belt in the front row. Look at both of their Mamma Rose's and you can see/hear that Bernadette sounds like a clarinette and Patti a FOG HORN. (this is in no way a dig at either acttress they are both legends and deseringly so, its just Pattis always the "Diva"and Bernadette the "damsel" or you can say one's Hilary Clinton and the other Sarah Palin they are complete opposites in style)
#11Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 8:13pm
"Betty Buckley auditioned for Nora in A DOLL'S LIFE."
Never heard that, but Glenn Close was reported to have wanted it very much, but she couldn't sing it. Perhaps she was fortunate that she didn't get it. She wasn't that much of a name at the time, but while A Doll's Life was in Los Angeles, The World According to Garp opened and Close was suddenly on the map in a bigger way.
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#12Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 8:49pm
^^^I'm married to the Assistant Casting Director for A DOLL'S LIFE, so I know that Buckley auditioned for it. Afterwards, Paul Gemingani told me he thought Buckley was the finest singer in the American theater.
My husband believes they saw Glenn Close as well (though of course she wasn't a movie star at the time, so it wasn't as memorable as it might be today).
I didn't ask why either woman wasn't cast because (a) Hal Prince often didn't give a reason, not even to his own staff; and (b) it's been 30 years: why start a rumor based on anyone's memory of the early 1980s?
Updated On: 5/27/12 at 08:49 PM
#13Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 8:52pmDidn't Susan Egan audition for Elphaba?
"Life in theater is give and take...but you need to be ready to give more then you take..."
#14Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 9:20pmOh, I wasn't doubting you about Buckley, Gaveston2. I'd just never heard it.
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#15Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 9:26pmNo problem, nobodyhome. I didn't think you were challenging me. I just listed my source, which I'm always happy to do. If I sounded defensive, then it is I who should apologize: bad wording on my part.
NoHSMisNotAMusical
Stand-by Joined: 10/21/11
#16Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 9:26pmFive thousand girls auditioned for Annie and were denied food because they didn't get the part.
Leadingplayer
Broadway Star Joined: 5/12/03
#17Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 9:32pmLorna Luft writes in her bio about auditioning for Grizabella. She makes it sound like she came pretty close to getting it. (wonder why she never did it as a replacement then.....)
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#18Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 11:18pmGee, I heard that's what happened to the boys that didn't get Oliver, too.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
random person 112
Broadway Star Joined: 6/26/11
#19Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/27/12 at 11:37pm^Lorna also almost got Adelaide in the guys and dolls revival.
Leadingplayer
Broadway Star Joined: 5/12/03
#20Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/28/12 at 12:18amShe did get Adelaide in the tour of the revival. (saw it: Voice-9, Acting-2)
Brick
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/21/06
#22Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/28/12 at 12:30pmThey offered Patti The Witch in the original production, but she wanted to play Cinderella. They let her come in a read for it, an offered her The Witch anyway. She decided to do it, negotiations began and then broke down.
#23Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/28/12 at 12:31pm
Patti wanted to play Cinderella? Seriously? Everyone knows she's a little nutty, but I never pegged her as downright delusional.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#24Roles that actors auditioned for
Posted: 5/28/12 at 12:35pm
WOW! I wonder why she didn't say this in her book...
Cinderella?!? Not even the Baker's Wife?
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