For most actors, getting cast in a Woody Allen movie is something to be crossed off one’s bucket list. However, when the cast list for Allen’s next film — which would eventually be titled Blue Jasmine — was revealed, two unlikely names were on the list: comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Louis C.K. Louis C.K. spoke to The New York Times about being cast in the film and initially losing the role he read for to Clay.
Louis C.K. actually initially approached Woody Allen for the role of Jack Dall on his own show, Louie. Though Allen turned it down (which led to the offbeat casting of David Lynch), Louis C.K. later heard from Allen when Allen began casting Blue Jasmine.
However, the initial read did not go the way Louis C.K. hoped it would have. He explains, “It just came out of nowhere. I got this e-mail: Woody Allen wants you to come in for something. I’ve been waiting for that e-mail my whole life. I’m not going to pretend I’m above that. I went into his office and read for a part that Andrew Dice Clay ended up getting. Woody said: ‘I know you can act. I just don’t know if this is the kind of guy that you are. This is a very mean guy, and you’re not a mean guy.’ And I read it, and I was like, yeah, I’m not getting the part. I can be working class. I can’t hit my wife. So I’ll talk the way I would say these things and I won’t get the part, but I’ll leave with my head up high. And that’s precisely what happened. But I was very emotional, because I had just met Woody and he was very kind to me.”
Despite not getting that part, Louis C.K. must have made an impression on the Academy Award winning director because he soon was cast in another role in the film. He reveals, “Two weeks later I was told, ‘His assistant is bringing something to your apartment’ It was some pages from the script and a letter from him. And it said: ‘You were too sweet a guy to do the other one, but this is one you could do. If you don’t want to do this, we’ll do something, someday.’ So I read the lines, I was laughing out loud. So I hand-wrote him a letter saying unequivocally yes, and sent it off.”
