Margot Robbie Just Missed Out on a Role on ‘American Horror Story: Asylum,’ Casting Director Says
Before she was Barbie, Margot Robbie almost had a role in another culturally iconic project: American Horror Story: Asylum.
In the most recent episode of Backstage’s podcast In the Envelope, casting director Eric Dawson opened up about how Robbie was almost cast in the second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story.
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“Margot is probably one of my favorite auditions of all time, and it was right before she broke out,” Dawson said. “She was just such a star. It was just crazy, her star appeal and when she walked in the room and her voice. Everything about it.”
Despite not getting the role on the hit anthology series, the Emmy-nominated casting director knew that she would become a major actress one day.
“That was one of those things as a casting director you go, ‘This is a star. What do we do with her?'” he recalled. “Then, immediately she started, just boom, boom, boom, and she was out of our sort of realm of possibility of hiring, but that’s really the fun part of casting, is seeing the people whose careers are just rising.”
Shortly after auditioning for the series, Robbie landed her first major role as Naomi Lapaglia in The Wolf of Wall Street. Since then, the two-time Oscar-nominated actress has gone on to star in films like Suicide Squad, I, Tonya, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bombshell, Amsterdam, Babylon and Asteroid City. Most recently, she starred in Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking box office hit Barbie.
Asylum aired from 2012 to 2013 and received 18 Emmy nominations. It starred Zachary Quinto, Joseph Fiennes, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters and James Cromwell, among others, with special guest stars Chloë Sevigny and Ian McShane. Dylan McDermott, Mark Consuelos, Adam Levine and Mark Margolis had recurring roles on the show.
Murphy and Dawson have worked together since the 1990s, with Dawson serving as the casting director on Glee, every season of American Horror Story and, most recently, Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, for which he received his eighth Emmy nom.
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