‘Terminal List’ Star Chris Pratt Found ‘Avatar’, ‘Star Trek’ Auditions ‘Demoralizing’
Chris Pratt developed The Terminal List so he didn’t have to audition for it. Long before Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, Pratt was auditioning for other franchises. When Avatar and the new Star Trek were gearing up, Pratt fell short. These weren’t just near misses. They made Pratt re-evaluate his career.
Pratt was a guest on the Smartless podcast on June 20. Now that he’s made it, he could reflect on the “demoralizing” auditions he didn’t land for Star Trek and Avatar.
Chris Pratt lost out to Chris Pine for ‘Star Trek’
The 2009 Star Trek was looking for new faces to play the young Enterprise crew. Fellow Hollywood Chris, Chris Pine ultimately won the role of Captain Kirk. With Avatar, Pratt didn’t go for the Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) role but still didn’t get to play one of the Na’vi.
“I didn’t come close,” Pratt said on Smartless. “In fact, I know I’ve made light of actors feeling rejection but I didn’t come close. In fact, it was so not close it was really demoralizing and made me actually truly question my potential or what I should be aiming for as an actor.”
Perhaps post ‘Terminal List’, Chris Pratt could land a ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Avatar’ audition
Pratt remembered the audition sides for Star Trek specifically. They made him feel inadequate before he even read his dialogue.
Anyway, I just remember reading the character description was like, ‘He walks in and he has the it factor. It is just the it factor with this guy.’ So I was feeling maybe a little overweight, I hadn’t been taking care of myself physically. I was in a relationship where we were drinking a lot. I walked in and I started sweating immediately. It was the casting assistant, and she just looked at me, she looked down and she pressed record and started doing her stuff while I was reading with the other casting assistant. I saw there was literally nothing about my audition that was compelling her whatsoever.
Chris Pratt, Smartless, 6/20/22
A teachable moment
Pratt understood exactly why he lost the casting directors of Star Trek and Avatar. Between those, and a lean few years, Pratt knew he had to redirect himself.
“It was like f***, what am I doing?” Pratt said. “I had enough of those in a very lean stretch of my career. I didn’t get hired for a couple years shortly before Parks and Rec. That’s when I just regauged. Early in my 20s, I was in pretty good shape. I was working out a lot, I was training, I was young. I was mostly getting those auditions for douchebag boyfriend. The guy who’d be like hey, ‘My dad’s got his Escalade outside, dumb bitch.’ Or whatever the line was, I’d spend two weeks figuring out how to do that line.”
It would take Guardians of the Galaxy for Pratt to train to be in marquee idol shape, but until then he figured out his strengths and used them.
“Anyway, so I auditioned for those things and I knew in the moment,” Pratt said. “First of all, I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t done the work that I needed to do physically to be the guy who walks in the room and commands attention. So that was when I got Andy and I was like wait a minute, there’s something maybe a little bit more compelling about a clown I could play.”
