CBS/Warner Bros.
While it can be easy to feel like we’ve wound up in one of the worst corners of the multiverse, at least we know we aren’t the one with James Corden with a starring role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
During a recent interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Corden revealed that he auditioned for the role of Samwise — which was ultimately played by Sean Astin — and that it was, unsurprisingly, “not good.”
“Every single person in London auditioned for Lord of the Rings. Everybody. I auditioned for Samwise. I was doing it! The accent and everything! ‘Mr Frodo!’” Corden said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“Two of my other friends went in. And we all got called back the next day, and then we got called back the next day. And then none of us got called back after that!”
Given how excellent director Peter Jackson crafted those films, had Corden somehow snuck his way into the cast, the trilogy would likely still be as revered as it is today. What we thankfully avoided, however, was an extra 15 or so years of Corden in our pop-cultural lives. Simply a massive bullet dodged.
Still, despite missing out on Lord of the Rings, Corden has still been able to carve out a film career with roles in generally reviled projects such as Gulliver’s Travels, Ocean’s 8, Cats, Trolls World Tour, The Emoji Movie, The Prom, and Cinderella.
Luckily for Lord of the Rings fans, it doesn’t appear as though Corden auditioned for either Jackson’s The Hobbit prequel trilogy or Amazon’s flashy new The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series.