Tom Holland Reveals How He “Bombed” His Star Wars: The Force Awakens Audition

Though Tom Holland made a name for himself playing Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there was a brief moment where he was one of the many people vying for a part in the highly anticipated Star Wars: Episode VII. While developing the movie Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams looked far and wide and probably auditioned half of Hollywood for roles in the movie, including Holland, who recounted the tale of his audition in a new interview. Speaking with Backstage, the Marvel actor revealed that he made it pretty far into the audition process but didn’t land the part due to one critical moment in his audition scene.

“I remember my audition for Star Wars, I was like four or five auditions in, and I think I was auditioning for John Boyega‘s role,” Holland said. “I remember doing this scene with this lady, bless her, and she was just a drone. So I was doing all of this, like, ‘We gotta get back to the ship!’ And she was going, ‘Bleep, bloop bloop, bleep bloop.’ I just couldn’t stop laughing. I found it so funny. And I felt really bad, because she was trying really hard to be a convincing android or drone or whatever they’re called. Yeah, I obviously didn’t get the part. That wasn’t my best moment.”

In the end it would have been impossible for Holland to be in both Star Wars and appear in all the Marvel Studios movies that he did, plus we can all agree that John Boyega crushed the part of Finn. Holland didn’t find himself typecast exclusively as nerdy high-schoolers with superpowers though, going on to appear in high-profile projects like the upcoming Uncharted and Cherry, the later of which reunites him with his Avengers: Endgame directors for another project.

“When they offered me the job, I was just really excited,” Holland revealed in an Actors on Actors talk for Variety. “And then when I read the script for the first time, I was like, ‘There’s no way I can make this film. I’ll fall apart. I can’t hold onto a character like this for so long.’ It was all about preparation, and really setting out the character beats and figuring out how I was going to get from A to B in each section. The hardest part was trying to merge the sections, because the character changes so much throughout the film.”

Cherry hits theaters on February 26th. It will then be available to stream on will come Apple TV+, starting on March 12th.