The actor who had to wait 40 years to work with Harrison Ford because they got stoned: “Completely snookered”
Hollywood is a place where playing the long game often comes in handy, although one actor probably didn’t expect a night of hard partying to eventually pay off 40 years later when they finally got the chance to work with Harrison Ford, having blown it the first time around.
It’s an industry where domino effects, missed connections, and what-ifs have a funny way of circling back for better or worse, and Ford knows that himself after landing his two most iconic roles despite being nowhere near the first choice for either of them.
George Lucas didn’t want anyone from American Graffiti to be in Star Wars, but wound up with Ford as Han Solo when an exhaustive audition process yielded no other suitable candidates. He didn’t want him in Raiders of the Lost Ark either, but when Tom Selleck was forced to pull out, he made Indiana Jones one of pop culture’s most indelible figures.
When the intrepid archaeologist’s first outing began gathering steam behind the scenes, countless actors threw their non-fedora hats into the ring for a role. One of them was Wendie Malick, who lined up an audition for Marion Ravenwood, and she was confident in her chances of snagging the part.
“I was wearing a red hoodie and red jeans with hearts all over the front, and I didn’t know what I was going in there for,” she recalled. “We just talked, and they put me on film. We laughed and had a lovely time for, I don’t know, like, 45 minutes or something.”
Having made the right impression on Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Malick was handed some pages to memorise for a screen test, only for her to decide that getting “completely snookered” the night before was the wisest idea. Waking up in a stupor the following morning, she wasn’t in the best shape.
“I think I got stoned,” she said. “I was drinking. I was just like, ‘Ahhhh! This is it!’ And then they called me, like, the next morning and said, ‘Can you go in, like, now?’ And I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t have the right clothes, I didn’t have anything, and I just really sucked at that thing. And when I saw the movie, I thought, ‘Oh, I would’ve killed in that.'”
Good things have a funny habit of coming to those who wait, though. Malick may have gotten so wasted the night before her audition that she bombed the chance to star alongside Ford in the 1981 classic, but she did get there in the end, four decades later, when she was cast as Julie Baram in the TV series Shrinking.
Ironically, it also presented her with the opportunity to play his love interest, with the actor shooting herself in the foot for Marion Ravenwood but still getting to romance the veteran as the doctor who treats Ford’s Paul Rhoades for his Parkinson’s before the sparks between them start to fly. It was a long road, but Malick got there in the end.
