Nepotism is a very real thing in Hollywood, something Elizabeth Olsen is fully aware of. As the younger sister of former all-conquering child stars Mary-Kate and Ashley, several doors were opened based solely on her surname. The actress even admitted that she considered adopting a different professional moniker when starting out in the industry to try and distance herself from her famed siblings.
It turns out that she needn’t have bothered, and some fans only recently discovered while WandaVision was airing on Disney Plus that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Wanda Maximoff was even the third Olsen sister. The 32-year-old won widespread acclaim for her performance in the streaming exclusive, and has to be considered a serious contender for Emmy recognition.
She’ll follow it up with a major supporting role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Olsen has become such an integral part of the shared mythology that the Sorcerer Supreme’s sequel will mark her fourth consecutive MCU project, with April 2018’s Netflix drama Kodachrome the last thing she appeared in that wasn’t part of the superhero series.
However, in a new interview Olsen revealed that she unsuccessfully auditioned for another pop-culture behemoth, but it didn’t go so well, and the star was open about how badly she believes her attempt to try and score the role of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones went.
“Yes, I auditioned for Game of Thrones. I auditioned for, like, the assistant to the casting director in a small room in New York with just a camera on me and them reading the script. I was doing the Khaleesi speech when she comes out of the fire. It was awful. I didn’t get a callback.”
Olsen would have been a complete unknown at the time she auditioned for Daenerys, with her feature film debut and breakthrough turn in Martha Marcy May Marlene premiering at Sundance three months before the first Game of Thrones episode aired on HBO, and it’s fascinating to think how things may have turned out had she not bombed her trial run.
