Shailene Woodley has been credited with delivering some of the most entertaining pieces of all time, including her fan-favorite Divergent film series and even the 2013 romcom The Spectacular Now. That said, the fact that she once nearly got kicked out of a $177 million film co-starring George Clooney because of her overacting sounds unbelievable. And yet, it couldn’t be truer.
Turns out, when she auditioned for the 2011 comedy-drama masterpiece The Descendants, the actress was called out about her acting out the scene in a bit too overly exaggerated manner, leading to her nearly getting kicked out of it. In fact, if she hadn’t begged her agents to get a callback for this particular piece, perhaps Woodley may have even ended up losing out on the role!
Shailene Woodley Nearly Lost Out on The Descendants for Her Overacting
In the late 2000s, when she auditioned for The Descendants, Shailene Woodley was still a considerably new name in the entertainment industry. While she continues to be widely renowned for playing the fan-favorite Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars (2014), this comedy-drama from 2011 was what had her gaining her true recognition and breakthrough in Hollywood.
For the role of Alexandra King, the daughter of George Clooney‘s lead protagonist Matt King, the Allegiant star had to enact the scene where her character confesses to her father that she red-handedly caught her mother cheating on him. And Woodley, for one, was confident about her audition, saying, “I walked out of it feeling like, ‘I slayed it, I’m gonna get this movie.’”
However, that hardly turned out to be the case. As the 32-year-old actress recently shared with Vanity Fair while walking down memory lane, “I didn’t get a callback. I was so confused. I begged my agents for a year almost. I emailed them every week and said, ‘Please just get me notes. Please get me notes. What did I do wrong? I know I’m supposed to do this film.’”
As it turned out, the casting director was anything but okay with her audition and felt like, instead of laying it out naturally, Woodley more or less overacted. As she continued to confess during the same interview, “The casting director was just like, ‘Alexander’s not interested. Like, she wasn’t good.’ I, like, went in and I cried, and it was this whole thing.”
And yet, the Killer Heat actress wasn’t one to just give up. If anything, she bugged her agents until they finally got her the notes and the role. She shared, “Finally, after a year of me bugging my agents, I was able to get a callback. And they gave me some notes. The notes were like, ‘Don’t cry. Don’t do anything. Just be honest.’ And that was the audition that got me the movie.”
While those notes do seem to be a bit too brutally harsh, they most certainly seem to have worked with Woodley’s acting in the film. This is because not only did the film end up giving her the push and breakthrough she needed to become a household name in the industry, but the actress also feels it all eventually helped in shaping her entire career.
At the Same Time, Shailene Woodley Feels The Descendants Shaped Her Career
During the same interview, Woodley also shared how they shot this very scene that she had auditioned with, mentioning the tips filmmaker Alexander Payne gave her to make her acting look as realistic as possible. “On the day when we were doing this scene, AP came up to me, sat by the couch, put his hands up, looked me in the eye, and just said, ‘Stop acting,’ but like in a really kind, compassionate, gentle way. ‘Be you’ is really what he meant,” she shared.
This one tip, the To Catch a Killer actress says, not only helped her shoot that one scene as perfectly as possible but also helped her with all the other roles she scored going forward in her career. To say the least, Woodley even went as far as to say that this one note from Payne might as well have helped shape her entire career into the star-studded masterpiece it is today. Woodley said:
That one note that Alexander gave me, I feel, shaped my entire career as far as who I became as an actor, and that’s what this scene taught me how to do. This was the scene where I got to learn it for myself because of Alexander.
All in all, by the time the movie was shot and released, Shailene Woodley had come a long way from when she overacted her part during the film’s audition. And it all seems to have worked out in everyone’s favor as well, since not only does The Descendants hold a comfortable 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but also secured a worthy $177 million (per Box Office Mojo) on its $20 million budget (per IMDb).
The Descendants can currently be streamed on Prime Video.
