“I couldn’t do it”: Morena Baccarin’s disastrous audition for one of ‘The Avengers’
Few things are more challenging for an actor than reading for a role.
They’re not often given full insight into the script or their character, and can only prepare so much to appear before casting directors who may still be trying to figure out the shape of the story. What makes someone perfect for a role is a nuanced process that requires a lot of trial-and-error; it’s not easy to conceive of something that doesn’t quite exist yet.
Morena Baccarin was no slouch when she was called in to audition for The Avengers, as she had an impressive filmography of television projects on her resume, having already worked with director Joss Whedon on the cult science fiction show Firefly before it was cancelled after one season.
She had been asked to read for the role of Shield agent Maria Hill, who would eventually be played by Colbie Smulders in the film and its several sequels, and according to Baccarin, auditioning for the role was a painful process, about which she recounted, “I was there with Cobie, we tested against each other and I was like, ‘She’s going to get this part, I can see it’. Joss kept telling me she was like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, that she had this kind of hard edge to her, and I was like ‘I don’t understand’. I couldn’t see it on the page, I couldn’t do it.”
In Baccarin’s defence, auditioning for The Avengers presented a unique challenge for two reasons; firstly, the setting for the character she was reading for is almost entirely the Shield helicarrier, meaning that she’d be interacting with a set that would be significantly adjusted using computer-generated imagery, so visualising an environment that didn’t yet exist while playing a character tasked with giving a lot of the film’s expositional dialogue with Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury had to be overwhelming.
The other issue was the unformed nature of the early installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wherein the idea of multiple heroes crossing over into one film was unheard of, and the fact that other films like Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were still in production made finalising the script for The Avengers even tougher, which is why Whedon had been brought in because he already had experience running a complex universe, having helmed shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel at the same time, and developing crossover events between them.
Baccarin’s career was thankfully not diminished after losing out on the role, as it was only shortly thereafter that she earned a key part on Homeland, the acclaimed Showtime series that ended up winning the Primetime Emmy Award for ‘Best Drama Series’.
It also wasn’t her last opportunity to appear in a Marvel comic book adaptation because she landed the role of Vanessa, the love interest to Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson, in the first Deadpool film.
Smulders’ tenure as the character was a bit more complicated, as Hill’s characterisation was severely altered in the negatively received Disney+ series Secret Invasion, but the fact that all 20th Century Fox properties (including Deadpool) are now under the Disney umbrella means that there’s an opportunity that Smulders and Baccarin could appear in an upcoming Marvel project together.
