Why Morgan Freeman intentionally bombed his audition for ‘The Thing’: “I didn’t get that job!”
Regardless of what they do for a living, everyone should have a set of principles they refuse to bend. Morgan Freeman solidified his non-negotiables at the beginning of his career, which cost him the chance to star in one of the greatest horror movies ever made.
Despite his career stretching back to the early 1960s, the actor hasn’t dabbled in horror too often. He’s starred in several films about serial killers, but the closest he’s come to appearing in an out-and-out scary story was the Stephen King adaptation, Dreamcatcher.
It wasn’t scary in the slightest because it was an interminable bore that was deservedly torn to shreds and bombed at the box office, but Freeman was honest enough to admit that he only did it for the money, which doesn’t quite excuse the ridiculous fake eyebrows he wore throughout.
Two decades previously, he landed himself an audition for a soon-to-be classic. Of course, nobody could have guessed at the time that John Carpenter’s sub-zero chiller would take its place among horror’s most indelible efforts, and that remained true after it was released, when it was blown away by Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
These days, ask 100 horror fans to name the ten greatest movies in the genre’s history, and 99 of them will probably feature Carpenter’s cosmic nightmare. One of the film’s strongest suits, outside of its gruesome practical effects, was the work of the ensemble cast, which could have featured Freeman were he willing to bend his principles.
At the time, he was still best known for being on a children’s show, but The Electric Company alum had no issues calling out casting directors for the lack of prominent Black roles when he auditioned for a part. When he read for The Thing, he raised those issues, and it ultimately cost him the job.
“I read the script, and I go back for the audition,” he recalled to Oprah Winfrey. “The producer or director, one of those, said, ‘Did you read the script? What did you think? I said, ‘Well, you’ve got 11 people at the South Pole. Eight of them are scientists. Then you have a cook, a mechanic, and something else; they’re all Black. What do you think I think?”
Although Freeman didn’t specify which part he was reading for, it can be easily inferred that it was either TK Carter’s cook, Nauls, or Keith David’s chief mechanic, Childs. Seeing as both the latter and Freeman are famed for their instantly recognisable voices, it may have been the latter, although his point still stands.
Only two of the main characters in The Thing were played by Black actors, and neither of them was a scientist. “Needless to say, I didn’t get that job!” Freeman added, noting that his reluctance to accept roles just for the sake of it cost him a lot of gigs. “So, there was a period there in the early ’80s when I didn’t get any work.”
He intentionally bombed his audition for The Thing because he didn’t think it was fair that Black actors weren’t being considered to play scientists, but sticking to his guns hardly hampered him in the long run.
