The director of My Best Friend's Wedding reveals that Russell Crowe auditioned for the film but didn't get cast after a catastrophic table read with Julia Roberts. Russell Crowe is best known for his roles in films from the early 2000s including Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, both of which earned him Oscar nominations (and a win for Gladiator). More recently, he has appeared as Roger Ailes in the miniseries The Loudest Voice and as Jor-El in the DC Extended Universe. He will also be making his Marvel debut as Zeus in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, which is releasing on July 8, 2022.
My Best Friend's Wedding, which ended up casting Dermot Mulroney in the role as Roberts' love interest, premiered on June 20, 1997. It follows Roberts as Jules Potter, a restaurant critic who doesn't realize she is madly in love with her best friend until he announces his engagement. The film also stars Cameron Diaz as her best friend's fiancée and Rupert Everett as her emotionally supportive friend George. The film was a huge success, grossing almost $300 million from its $38 million budget, landing at #6 on the domestic box office chart for the year.
Vulture shared an excerpt from an interview with My Best Friend's Wedding director P.J. Hogan, which is featured in the new book From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy by Scott Meslow. Hogan revealed that when Russell Crowe auditioned for the film, "it was one of the worst table reads I’ve ever experienced." Crowe severely lacked chemistry with co-star Julia Roberts, who "was literally leaning over the table, staring, like, inches from Russell’s face, trying to make eye contact. And he wouldn’t look at her." Crowe also "read every line in a monotone." To this day, Hogan doesn't understand what caused the awkward interaction. Read the full quote below:
“I don’t know what went wrong... It was one of the worst table reads I’ve ever experienced. Russell was seated opposite Julia. He gripped that script, and he stared at that script, and he didn’t look at her once. He read every line in a monotone. At one point, Julia was literally leaning over the table, staring, like, inches from Russell’s face, trying to make eye contact. And he wouldn’t look at her. At the end of the reading, Russell came up to me and said, ‘I thought that went pretty well.’ And then I knew: Russell was not going to be in My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
At the time of this audition, Crowe was still a relative unknown. He had been acting for some years in Australia, including a recurring role on the long-running sitcom Neighbours, but his biggest American project up to that point was a third-billed role in the Sam Raimi western The Quick and the Dead. However, even without My Best Friend's Wedding, he struck gold in 1997, starring in the hit crime drama L.A. Confidential.
If My Best Friend's Wedding had ended up featuring Crowe opposite Roberts, his career may have turned out very differently. He may have found himself starring in far more romantic comedies rather than Oscar-nominated dramas and historical epics. However, from the way his table read went, it seems that this potential branch of his career was never meant to be.
Source: Vulture