Twilight Star Says an Odd On-Set Habit Got Him Cut From the Franchise

Taylor Lautner says a bizarre behind-the-scenes twist nearly got him fired from Twilight — and he just told Nikki Reed the full story on The Squeeze podcast.

Here’s a very Twilight-era sentence: Taylor Lautner says his job as Jacob Black basically came down to whether he could grow abs fast enough. Yes, really.

On an episode of The Squeeze, the podcast hosted by Taylor Dome, Lautner sat down with his former Twilight co-star Nikki Reed and unpacked how close he came to losing Jacob after the first movie.

"I got fired. I literally got fired, and I needed to grow abs to get my job back."

What’s behind that? In Stephenie Meyer’s books, Jacob transforms into a werewolf in the second installment and suddenly gets, well, massive. After the first film, the team wanted to line up the movies with the novels more closely, which meant they started eyeing someone older and more physically built to take over the role going forward.

Lautner’s fix was simple and brutal: lift like his job depended on it, because it did. He went all-in on the training, put on the muscle, and convinced everyone that the Jacob they already had could be the Jacob from the books. Reed backed that up on the podcast, saying he worked incredibly hard at a pretty young age to show he was committed to whatever the role needed, and that she felt protective of him from the start and proud of what he pulled off.

How it played out

• Twilight hits; Lautner is Jacob in the first film.
• Book 2 Jacob is bigger and more muscular after the werewolf turn.
• The team considers replacing Lautner with someone older and more built to match the books.
• Lautner trains, adds the muscle, and wins the part back.
• He keeps the role and plays Jacob Black in every Twilight movie.

In the end, the guy is now basically synonymous with Jacob Black, but according to him, that only happened because he made the physique jump the franchise wanted. Hollywood notes: sometimes the casting call is just 'come back when you have a six-pack.'