Knives Out Mystery 3 Star Josh O’Connor Reveals Surprisingly Simple Reason He Was Fired

Josh O'Connor shows up in Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery as Father Jud Duplenticy, a young priest with a history in the ring and just enough edge peeking out from under the collar. The funny part? He actually pulled a lot of that from his own life — right down to a very awkward church job he did not keep for long.

From altar boy to boxer-priest (with a history of getting the giggles)

On Late Night With Seth Meyers, O'Connor said he grew up Irish Catholic, did time as an altar boy, and got canned for — of all things — smiling too much during Mass. His mom tried to smooth it over by telling the priest he was just happy to be in church; in reality, he was cracking up because he could see his brothers and it was killing him. He has joked elsewhere (to British Vogue) that it was probably the first sign he had a taste for performing. Also worth noting: this isn’t his first time in a collar — he played a priest in Emma before Father Jud came along.

'I grew up Irish Catholic, I was an altar boy... and I got fired for smiling too much.'

The 'hot' priest with the neck tattoo everyone noticed

The internet has promptly filed Father Jud under the 'hot priest' category, and the character’s past as a boxer is baked into the movie. He literally throws a punch right out of the gate. There’s also that little detail peeking out from his collar: a tattoo. O'Connor told Tudum it’s a devil and an angel with the word 'serendipity' underneath — a deliberate choice so that his past is always creeping up into the present, even while he’s buttoned into formal clergy wear. He and Johnson went deep on the look; the idea is that Father Jud isn’t pretending his old life didn’t happen. The anger that came with it is still in there, redirected into more useful places — like the scene where he channels that energy into crafting a new crucifix for the church.

Rian Johnson beat him too

O'Connor also admits he could not crack Johnson’s mystery on the page. He’s dyslexic, so scripts take him time — he reads each page three times to let it sink in. With Wake Up Dead Man, he’d pause a quarter of the way through, make himself a cup of tea, jot down suspects, and keep going. He guessed wrong every single round. He credits Johnson’s lean writing — no cheap red herrings required — and called this thing basically the toughest cryptic crossword of murder stories. If you felt the movie initially nudged you toward suspecting Father Jud before widening the blast radius, you weren’t alone.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.