Jennifer Lawrence Was Refused a Role in True Blood Cause She'd Make It Even Weirder
The creator's reason for not casting the actress is actually understandable.
True Blood, offering a mature take on the vampire genre, was a huge hit for HBO as well as a great launching pad for many A-list performers, including Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgård.
However, it looks like the show's cast could have been even more star-studded, as series creator Alan Ball recently revealed that Benedict Cumberbatch, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Chastain all auditioned for roles in the series but ultimately didn't get them.
Cumberbatch and Chastain read for two major characters, Bill and Sookie, but the roles went to Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin simply because they were a better match. As for Lawrence, the reason for not casting her was perhaps weird, but also quite understandable.
According to Alan Ball, he really liked Lawrence as an actress and was willing to cast her as a supporting character, a werepanther girl who would then become Jason's girlfriend, but a minor inconvenience prevented him from doing so — at the time of filming for Season 3, Lawrence was only 17 years old.
While it's not uncommon for actors to start out young and there are several examples of underage performers appearing in R-rated projects, Ball's reasoning wasn't related to those facts, as the heroine's storyline bothered him much more. True Blood is a pretty steamy show, featuring lots of explicit sex scenes on a regular basis, so casting a 17-year-old girl as a love interest for a 34-year-old actor would have definitely caused some controversy.
The series was already considered controversial at the time, and it looks like Ball was simply afraid that another scandal would cause HBO to cancel the troubled show, and that forced him to say no to Lawrence's candidacy.
Though that was probably a huge bummer for the actress at the time, her career has since then proven that she didn't need the True Blood gig to break into the A-list echelon. After all, she could have really been stuck in the supporting actress category if she'd gotten that small role, refusing to work harder to get the big lead roles that made her famous.
Cumberbatch and Chastain are probably not too remorseful about their failed auditions either, as they are enjoying fruitful and lucrative careers to this day.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter.