Seth Rogen once tried out for the role of Cheddar Bob in the 2002 film 8 Mile in what he still considers to be the “craziest audition of my life.”
On the latest episode of The A24 Podcast, The Invite star and director Olivia Wilde brought up working as an assistant for the late casting director Mali Finn, to which Rogen responded, “I only remember her because she’s responsible for the craziest audition of my life.”
Rogen recalled being informed that he needed to bring a reading partner to his audition because nobody on the casting side felt “comfortable reading the other role.”
“I was told beforehand, ‘cause the scenes were with other rappers, and we got a fax or some shit beforehand being like, ‘No one in this office feels comfortable reading the other role, so you have to bring someone to read with you,’” he said at the 4:42 mark.
“Like we all have a rapper on standby, a reading rapper,” Rogen continued.
Wilde assumed Rogen chose his longtime friend and working partner Evan Goldberg, but he ended up going with Jason Segel after finding out that he was also auditioning for Cheddar Bob.
“So, we just went with each other, and then one of us did it, and then we switched, and the other one did it,” Rogen remembered.
While the plan seemed logical on paper, everything fell apart when they were actually in the room.
“We both started laughing," Rogen recalled. "I started laughing uncontrollably, to the point I was just like, ‘This is, like, it was too stupid.’”
The role of Cheddar Bob ended up going to Evan Jones, who has also starred in The Book of Eli and Den of Thieves.
“Auditioning is embarrassing in the best of times,” he said. “Add the fact that one of my best friends is watching me do it, and we’re both reading for rappers from Detroit, which we could NOT have been less right for.”
