Whitehall recalled his dad’s disappointment when he did not get the role, which went to Daniel Radcliffe
Jack Whitehall has spoken of the time his dad took him out of his London school for a hastily arranged audition to get the role of Harry Potter in the film franchise. As we all know, the 38-year-old comedian did not play the boy wizard but he has revealed for the first time how badly he “tanked” the audition.
Whitehall was attending Tower Park School in Richmond in 2000 where a casting director arrived at the school to give pupils the chance to audition for the films. Whitehall’s dad, producer and talent agent Michael Whitehall, instead arranged for him to have a one-on-one meeting with the casting director – but it did not go well.
He told Capital Breakfast: “They sent one of the casting directors to the school to audition a load of the kids there and my dad, obviously being in the industry, was like, ‘that is a complete waste of time, no-one has ever been cast from an open audition. I will get you one-on-one time with the casting director’.”
The audition did not go to plan as Whitehall had not read Harry Potter at the time and so was unable to answer any questions about it. He said: “So, classic nepo parent pulls me out of school, drives me down to London, gets me in front of the casting director.
“Unfortunately, I hadn’t read the book, so I went to this audition and they started asking me loads of questions about the book and Harry Potter, I was trying to wing it and started talking about Orks and stuff.
“They were like, ‘that’s the wrong book, mate,’ and absolutely tanked the audition.”
Whitehall recalled his dad’s disappointment when he did not get the role, which went to Daniel Radcliffe. Whitehall famously went to the same school as Robert Pattinson who played the role of Cedric Diggory in the 2005 film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
He said: “I didn’t get it and my dad was bitterly disappointed, having given me this platform and opportunity and I abused it and then from the open casting at the schools, entering through the proper avenues, Emma Watson got cast as Hermione Granger.”
