When Robert Pattinson was cast as Edward Cullen in Twilight, he won a highly coveted role that tons of Hollywood actors surely fought for. We’ve heard before that Henry Cavill was sought after to play the vampire, and Shadow & Bone’s Ben Barnes, Evil Dead’s Shiloh Fernandez and the franchise’s own Jackson Rathbone were finalists to star against Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan. But did you know Josh Peck was almost cast as well?
Well, the Drake & Josh star shared this week that back in 2006, in the midst of leading the Nickelodeon sitcom, he tried out for the role too. He wasn’t confident he was right for the part, as she shared:
A month later, I’m with my manager and he goes ‘It’s down to you and three guys, you’re close.’ I’m like ‘Really?’ I hadn’t even had a tummy tuck yet, I’m like, ‘There’s no way.’ He’s gotta be so shirtless, that’s not gonna happen. Spoiler alert. Didn’t get it. And then seeing R-Patz playing this part, I’m like in what fucking world were they like ‘OK, he’s what we’re thinking, Chris Hemsworth or Stanley Tucci.’ Like what the fuck? Impossible.
Robert Pattinson and Josh Peck have completely different vibes. At the time, Pattinson had spent his teenage years as a model before acting in a host of dramas and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He had the brooding thing going for him already. Peck, on the other hand, had started to establish himself as a young comedic actor in the hilarious Drake & Josh series. The same year, he also voiced the role of a comical opossum in Ice Age: The Meltdown. You can understand how he wasn’t sure he’d sell the world on “I’m the skin of a killer, Bella.”
Peck revealed his surprising audition during a new episode of the Good Guys Podcast, which the actor hosts with influencer Ben Soffer, where the pair had Twilight’s Taylor Lautner on the show. Check out the moment where Peck shared with the Jacob Black actor their missed movie connection:
Pretty wild, right? Taylor Lautner shared he had no idea the actor ever was up for Edward Cullen, and Peck joked they “almost worked together!” Young actors surely audition for all sorts of random projects blindly, and it’s pretty funny to see Peck’s reaction to almost being in Twilight because his work is basically the complete opposite of Robert Pattinson’s.
Peck may not have been the lion to Bella Swan’s lamb, but he’s rather famous for his Nickelodeon sitcom that co-starred Drake Bell and aired at the time, even if he’s debunked the idea that the series made him rich. Peck has also been in a host of comedies over the years, and was even part of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer cast over the summer as American physicist Kenneth Bainbridge. Now, he does share something with Pattinson since the British actor starred in 2020’s Tenet and worked with Nolan as well.
While Peck admittedly wasn’t born to play Edward Cullen, by losing the part, he didn’t have to take part in the Team Edward/Team Jacob rivalries or spend a lot of time getting into shape as a Twilight love interest like Lautner did and once called an “absolute nightmare.” The filmmakers really did find a great Edward Cullen in Robert Pattinson. You can rewatch all the Twilight movies now (and imagine how Peck might have fit in) with an Amazon Prime subscription.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
