David Krumholtz shares the “worst audition” story of his career, which was for Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, the 2010 buddy cop comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Krumholtz is a character actor best known for his roles as Bernard in The Santa Clause franchise and Charlie Eppes in the television series Numb3rs. Krumholtz had the biggest exposure of his career in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer with a compassionate performance as Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who worked as a consultant on the Manhattan Project and was a close ally to Oppenheimer.
On Twitter/X, David Krumholtz recently shared his “worst audition experience ever” for Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, which was interrupted by a “70-year-old Super Mario lookalike” whose cellphone rang throughout almost the entire scene. See Krumholtz recount the story below:
He begins, “Worst audition experience ever? For Cop Out and Kevin Smith. Nightmare. Josh Gad was there too. It was unreal.”
Krumholtz continues, “I walk in. Kevin Smith says hi. Casting director reiterates, ‘one take, no stopping, just one scene.’ Ok. There is a man in the room that I can only describe as a 70 year old Super Mario lookalike. He does not introduce himself. I have no idea why he is there.“
Krumholtz concludes, “I begin. 3 lines into the scene, Old Mario’s cellphone rings. LOUD. Very LOUD. I stop. I can’t concentrate. Kevin Smith & the casting director tell me to keep going. The phone is still ringing and old Mario is desperately fumbling it, has no idea how to turn it off. ‘Keep going.’ I kept going. Incredibly distracted. Old Mario finally turns off his phone around the final line of the scene. I thought they’d give me one more run at it, out of kindness. ‘Thanks, David. Good seeing you.’ I walked out, waited for Josh, and drove him home. We laughed about it.“
David Krumholtz’s Oppenheimer Audition Was Also Crazy
Though he ultimately got the part, as opposed to Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, David Krumholtz’s audition for Oppenheimer was also crazy. As recounted during an appearance on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Krumholtz had met Christopher Nolan about 16 years prior when the director was scouting locations for The Dark Knight at the same studio where Numb3rs was shot. Nolan approached Krumholtz and praised his performance in the show, much to the actor’s surprise.
Because of his previous encounter with Nolan, Krumholtz wasn’t intimidated when he had to audition for the filmmaker face-to-face. However, when he arrived at the audition, Krumholtz was the only actor there, which worried him. He only read two scenes for Nolan, and the director made him do it three times, trying to give a different performance each time. After the third time, Nolan told him, “I want you to do it again, but this time I want you to do it like you’re driving home from this audition thinking ‘I should have done it that way.'”
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Convinced he had blown one of the biggest opportunities of his career, Krumholtz left the audition, drove straight to a brewery, and “downed a bunch of beer” to drown his sorrows. About three or four beers in, Krumholtz received a call from his agent informing him he got the part, though he had no idea how integral he would be to the movie. Krumholtz clarified that he was clean and sober for 14 months after the incident.
Cop Out
Cop Out is a comedic buddy-cop action movie that follows Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as Jimmy and Paul, two NYPD detectives trying to find a priceless mint-conditioned baseball card. When Jimmy needs $50,000 to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, he heads to a pawnshop to sell his baseball card, only for the shop to be robbed. Now with his distracted partner currently focused on the fact his wife may be cheating on him, the two will engage in a game of cat and mouse across the city to get the card back.
- Release Date
- February 26, 2010
- Director
- Kevin Smith
- Cast
- Bruce Willis , Tracy Morgan , Juan Carlos Hernández , Cory Fernandez , Ana de la Reguera , Jason Hurt
- Runtime
- 107minutes
- Writers
- Robb Cullen , Mark Cullen
- Budget
- $30 million
- Studio(s)
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- Distributor(s)
- Warner Bros. Pictures
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer is a film by Christopher Nolan, which follows the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy will play the titular role, with the story based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
- Release Date
- July 21, 2023
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Cast
- Cillian Murphy , Emily Blunt , Matt Damon , Robert Downey Jr. , Rami Malek , Florence Pugh
- Runtime
- 150 Minutes
- Writers
- Christopher Nolan
- Budget
- $100 Million
- Studio(s)
- Syncopy Inc. , Atlas Entertainment
- Distributor(s)
- Universal Pictures
