Lots of actors have stories of auditions that went badly, but “black-ish” star Anthony Anderson has a story that’s absolutely delicious.
Years ago, while auditioning to play a prison cook in Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence’s film “Life,” Anderson saw that the scene he was supposed to read involved a fight over his character’s cornbread. He decided to surprise the casting director.
“I’m a closet chef,” he told TheWrap. “So I made cornbread from scratch.”
It was Anderson’s first big audition for a movie role, and he had no idea how grateful the casting director and the others at the studio would be.
“I didn’t know that they were so inundated with auditions that day that they didn’t get a lunch,” he said. “So when I came in with this fresh, piping, cake-like cornbread… they devoured it.”
They spent the rest of the audition talking about cornbread, and Anderson got a call-back to audition again.
This time, Anderson’s character — “Cookie” — was supposed to talk about his grandmother’s rib recipe. So you may be able to guess what Anderson brought to the audition, and how well it went over with the film’s grateful producers.
Anderson landed the role in “Life,” released in 1999, and went on to roles in “The Departed,” “Barbershop,” and, of course “black-ish” — for which he received two Emmy nominations last year.
You can watch Anderson tell the whole story in the video above, where he also talks about how one of his “black-ish” scenes went viral this past season, and watching his TV children grow up onscreen and off.