Whitney Cummings has recounted the “humiliating” experience of failing an audition for Francis Ford Coppola’s divisive recent film Megalopolis, only to be gifted a signed book and a bottle of wine.
The comedian and actor, 42, said the experience was so strange that she thought she was being filmed for prank show Punk’d.
When asked about the audition on her Good For You podcast, Cummings said: “This is such a core trauma for me.”
She went on to explain that the 85-year-old Godfather director had invited her to audition and sent her pages of dialogue to learn. “I’m working on it for days, obviously,” she recalled. “Because it’s Francis Ford Coppola.”
Cummings said that after she arrived she spent “three-and-a-half hours” in hair and makeup before the audition started, which included being given “jheri curls on my forehead that were glued down” and a gold crown.
Describing the audition room, Cummings said: “Everyone is so quiet. There is no vibe of, ‘We’re at an audition, it’s nice to meet you.’ It’s just so awkward, and I go in... and I’m like, ‘Okay, where do you want to start first?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, no, we’re not going to do the scene.’
“I was like, ‘Okay.’ That was three days of my life! He’s like — I believe it was... he would just throw things at me like, ‘In an English accent, say goodbye to your son going to war. Go.’ I’m not kidding.
“‘Now your husband is leaving you for your sister. Australian accent. Go!’ Literally, because I did the show Punk’d, I literally was like, ‘If I’m being Punk’d, this is genius, this is actually genius.’
“Because I disassociated the entire thing.”
Cummings added that when the audition was finally over, Coppola gave her “a signed copy of his new book. He signed it in front of me, as if I had shown up to an autograph signing, as if I wanted... which, I mean, thank you, but... and then gave me a bottle of Francis Ford Coppola wine, like, ‘you’ll need this.’ It was just so humiliating, and so confounding.”
The Independent has approached Francis Ford Coppola for comment.
Megalopolis divided critics when it was released earlier this year. The Independent’s Geoffrey McNab gave the film three stars, writing: “Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded $120m (£94m) epic, certainly isn’t another Godfather or Apocalypse Now, but it’s at least bursting with ideas. The filmmaker spent decades trying to get Megalopolis off the ground. What if it was no good? And what to make of the many claims of chaos on its set? Ultimately, this isn’t the car crash it could have been. It is, though, deeply flawed and very eccentric.”
