Before Ryan Reynolds landed the Green Lantern gig he had to fight off competition from Bradley Cooper and Justin Timberlake. When the three contenders were revealed I was rooting for Cooper as Reynolds already had Deadpool in the works and Justin Timberlake is…Justin Timberlake. Now that time has passed Bradley Cooper has finally spoken about his audition, and according to him even he would have hired Reynolds over himself.
From Splashpage:
“I did get a chance to try out for it, which was amazing to even get a chance,” Cooper told O’Brien. “Ryan Reynolds got it—who, by the way, if I was directing the movie, I would cast him. He’s perfect. He actually looks like a superhero.”
“I couldn’t not do Christian Bale’s Batman when I was doing the audition,” he laughed. “I don’t know what it was! I put a mask on and the director was like, ‘Okay Bradley, be regular and talk.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, got it… [in a deep, gravely Batman voice] listen, Sally, we’re going to have to take your family away if you don’t listen to me!’ By the way, that’s the worst Batman [impression] ever. I apologize.”
When he saw actual playback footage from his audition, Cooper said that his Bale-inspired take on Jordan was laughably bad.
“At one point, I actually walked back and saw it, because they have it on the monitor while you’re auditioning,” he remembered. “I saw a little clip as they were rewinding it, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, that can’t be.’ It looked like a Saturday Night Live sketch! I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not getting this! Now I can really do my Batman! Who gives a s—?’”
