Headliner of the series “The Scarlet Servant”, Joseph Fiennes almost played none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars – episode 1: the phantom menace”! Yes, but here it is: he failed the auditions…by a 5-year-old child!
Years pass, and tongues loosen. Occasionally. According to information gleaned by the US website The Wrap in 2017, the British actor Joseph Fiennes, one of the headliners of the series The Handmaid’s Tale, revealed to them in an interview that he had once passed an audition “for a great director”.
Hearing that followed “reduced, after several positive tests, to him and another very good actor who was at the time a student with me in drama school”. At first, the actor seemed not to want to let go of the name of the film, the famous director, and his competitor to the screen tests.
By insisting a little, the site The Wrap obtained the anecdote: the competing actor was none other than Ewan McGregor, a student like him on the benches of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Joseph Fiennes had actually passed the first test of the auditions before George Lucas and casting director Robin Gurland, who were looking for their Obi-Wan Kenobi for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
In the next stage of the audition, Fiennes then met someone’s daughter. “A lovely child” said the actor, “who was about 5 years old. He [ndlr : George Lucas] introduced me to her and said, ‘This is Joe, and he may be the next Obi-Wan Kenobi!’ The little girl then turned around and said, ‘I don’t like this gentleman. He is weird. I do not like him.’ That’s how my audition went.”
We imagine that it must have been a little hard to take for the actor … A five-year-old child therefore torpedoed him – with the consent of Lucas – any hope of taking on what was then one of the most coveted roles. in the prequel to the Star Wars saga. The rest of the story is now well known…