Nicholas Galitzine Had A Cringey Tarzan Audition That Still Haunts Him

Ever since he appeared in the Netflix original movie “Purple Hearts” in 2022, British actor Nicholas Galitzine has become a major breakout star … but that doesn’t mean he aced all of his early auditions. In fact, he says one of those auditions was so awful that he still cringes just thinking about it.

During a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter in June 2024 — which also featured Jon Hamm (“Fargo”), Matt Bomer (“Fellow Travelers”), Clive Owen (“A Murder at the End of the World”), Callum Turner (“Masters of the Air”), and David Oyelowo (“Lawmen: Bass Reeves”) — Galitzine and his contemporaries started talking about auditions, and despite being one of the youngest performers at the table, Galitzine had a lot to say. After the others shared some stories, THR brought up Galitzine’s recent film “The Idea of You” and the fact that his co-star Anne Hathaway said he could have “chemistry with a lamp,” which amused him. “Honestly, that was an amazing audition experience where I had a very conducive room, and it makes all the difference,” he recalled. “You come out of it with like this performance high.”

Galitzine then continued, describing an audition that still haunts him — which may well have been the 2016 film “The Legend of Tarzan,” though he doesn’t specify. “It’s less feedback, as much as it was the look of horror on the casting director’s face,” he said. “But when I went into audition for young Tarzan, there were no lines, and I was told that I had to pretend that I had an orange that someone was trying to steal from me and I had to guard it. And you know when you don’t go for something entirely, and it just seems very feeble and pathetic and wrong? That is a moment that keeps me awake at night. I think about it a lot.” (Hamm, at that point, quipped that Galitzine may never eat an orange again.)

In the same interview, Nicholas Galitzine addressed his recent string of sexy, steamy projects — more on those in a moment — and was quite clear that he’s not worried about being “typecast” or taking similar roles. After David Oyelowo made a solid point about how, in their shared industry, you can’t simply wait for opportunities to present themselves, Galitzine responded to the moderator’s question about roles that these actors would avoid in the future, and he was very blunt about his recent work … and basically said that he feels like he has the freedom to seek all sorts of projects these days.

I’m very candid about my career, and it’s interesting what you’re saying about not waiting,” Galitzine said. “I think, for me, everything had to move the needle in the direction toward the artistry that I really wanted to make. And especially early on in my career, there were a lot of romantic leads. That being said, I have done a romantic lead recently with Anne Hathaway and I really loved the movie. It’s a lot of fun. I feel very fulfilled within this romantic lead space. And I have much more agency now to be able to do these roles that I’ve not been able to do for the last however many years. It is a good feeling.”

It’s definitely for the best that Nicholas Galitzine is happy playing the romantic lead because he’s been doing that a lot lately … and he’s really good at it! I already mentioned his appearance in the military romance “Purple Heart,” but in 2023, Galitzine made waves with his performance opposite Taylor Zakhar Perez in “Red, White & Royal Blue,” the Amazon adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s bestselling queer romance. As Prince Henry (a fictionalized version of Prince Harry, by all appearances), Galitzine really sells his romance with First Son of the United States Alex Claremont-Diaz (Zakhar Perez), and the movie was such a massive hit that McQuiston is returning to pen a sequel. 

That same year, Galitzine showed off his (frankly incredible) comedic chops in Emma Seligman’s bonkers queer high school comedy “Bottoms” — where he gives one of the best line readings of the entire year in “Shut up, nerd!” — and in 2024, he played a Harry Styles-style heartthrob in “The Idea of You” and the young, scheming, and promiscuous George Villiers in the Starz and Sky Studios historical drama “Mary & George” (which also stars Julianne Moore). Basically, the world is Galitzine’s oyster at this point, and the casting director of that unspecified Tarzan movie is probably really regretting their decision right about now.