This was published 3 years ago
It’s the actor Tom Hanks rejects who has found podcast redemption
By Barry Divola
Podcast
Dead Eyes
Connor Ratliff
Connor Ratliff has turned rejection lemons into lemonade with this funny, yet heartfelt podcast.
Most of us have had a “What if?” moment or two. For Connor Ratliff, it was when he had a big break handed to him, and soon afterwards it was taken away. And the person who took it away happened to be one of the most universally beloved actors in Hollywood.
More than two decades ago, following two years of being rejected as an actor, Ratliff auditioned for a small role on the Tom Hanks-produced TV mini-series Band Of Brothers. And he got it. But then he was called back to meet Hanks himself. Soon afterwards he was told he had lost the role, reportedly because Hanks felt he had “dead eyes”.
Ratliff has never forgotten it, but he has turned those lemons into lemonade with this funny, yet heartfelt podcast. At first glance, this is pretty low-stakes stuff. So what if an actor lost a job? Ratliff acknowledges this, and he is more than aware of the fact that there are unsolved murders and pressing social issues out there. But he uses his own experience from all those years ago to investigate the broader issue of how we deal with failure and rejection.
Yes, he does some detective work to find out exactly what happened in the room with Hanks that day, even tracking down and interviewing the actor who replaced him. But along the way he gets advice and hears stories of rejection from the likes of Elijah Wood, Aimee Mann and Judd Apatow, as well as Jon Hamm, who was in an acting program with Ratliff in their younger days and was once bluntly told that he’d never make it in TV.
Ratliff turned out okay, too. You’ve possibly seen him in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel or Orange is the New Black or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Turns out his eyes weren’t as dead as Tom Hanks thought they were.
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