Jesse Plemons’ disastrous ‘Star Wars’ audition: “I was spiralling”

Posted On October 27, 2025October 27, 2025

In Breaking Bad, a show filled with drug kingpins, vicious gangsters, and neo-Nazis, one of the most hated characters of all was some ginger kid named Todd, played by the incomparable Jesse Plemons, selling sinister in the guise of terrible normalcy.

Often hit with the ‘underrated’ tag, Plemons hasn’t cropped up in too many mainstream movies since his days in New Mexico. Some of his more overtly profit-chasing projects include Disney’s Jungle Cruise and the unforgivable Battleship, making the need for him to stay away from films set on boats a serious consideration.

However, had things gone a little differently around at the time, the Texan might have been the star of one of the biggest franchises of all time. 

According to reports, Plemons was in the running to play a lead role in the rebooted Star Wars trilogy following the House of Mouse’s acquisition of Lucasfilm. Rumours swirled online about which character he was meant to play in the series’ seventh overall entry, The Force Awakens, with some suggesting Kylo Ren due to his propensity for playing villains, but that part went to Adam Driver instead.

There’s a theory that he was meant to play the First Order’s General Hux, but that might just be because he kind of looks like Domhnall Gleeson, and while some even speculated he was going to play Luke Skywalker’s son, the character never ended up appearing in the story. 

Speaking to The Independent, the actor confirmed that he auditioned for the series, but didn’t reveal which part he was up for, and that might be because he desperately wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. “I went in, gave a terrible audition. I had no idea what I was doing,” he mourned, “It was just these scenes without any context. JJ Abrams was really nice, but I was spiralling”.

Plemons has been very vocal in the past about his hatred for the audition process, once even telling his agent not to send him any more commercials, because he couldn’t stand trying out for them, but it was an interesting one for The Force Awakens. So much of the project was shrouded in secrecy that open auditions were held for the two primary roles, which were known as ‘Rachel’ and ‘Thomas’, to keep people in the dark. Fun fact: this very writer was meant to send in a video screen test until his proposed scene partner suffered a concussion; what could have been, eh?

It seems as if his run-in with a galaxy far, far away hasn’t hurt Plemons’ relationship with franchises that badly, for it was recently announced that he’ll be playing a younger version of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character Plutarch Heavensbee in the upcoming The Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping. He clearly hasn’t been put off a universe where characters have ridiculous names, either.

It’s hard to imagine where he would have fit into the sequel trilogy, and while he would have made an excellent villain, given how these films played out, he probably did himself a massive favour by blowing that audition.

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