‘Malcolm in the Middle’ Star Justin Berfield Was Once in the Running to Play Anakin Skywalker
Long before ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ became one of the defining sitcoms of the early 2000s, its future star was chasing a very different kind of stardom entirely. Justin Berfield, who would go on to spend seven seasons playing the mischievous older brother Reese, once found himself caught up in one of the most competitive child castings in Hollywood history.
At the time, Berfield was already a working child actor, having spent years starring as Ross Malloy on ‘Unhappily Ever After’ after breaking into the industry through commercials as a five-year-old. That experience made him a real contender when a very different casting call landed on his radar entirely.
That casting call belonged to none other than ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,’ which sent casting directors searching for a young actor to play Anakin Skywalker in the franchise’s long-awaited prequel trilogy. Berfield has now confirmed he was actually part of that massive search, revealing he auditioned for the role of young Anakin around 1995, when he was just nine years old.
The scale of that search was genuinely staggering. Roughly 3,000 young actors were considered for the part at various points during casting, and Berfield’s own audition reportedly placed him among a small group of finalists that also included Cameron Finley, Devin Michael, Michael Angarano, and a young Haley Joel Osment. Footage from the casting process has circulated online over the years, showing several of those candidates, Berfield included, being evaluated for the role.
The part ultimately went to Jake Lloyd, whose take on young Anakin became one of the most recognizable, and polarizing, performances of the entire prequel era once ‘The Phantom Menace’ hit theaters in 1999.
Missing out on the galaxy far, far away didn’t slow Berfield down for long. Shortly after his Anakin audition, he landed the role that would define his career, playing Reese Wilkerson in Fox’s ‘Malcolm in the Middle,’ which premiered in 2000 and ran for seven seasons through 2006.
Berfield appeared in all 151 episodes of the series, and combined with his earlier 100-episode run on ‘Unhappily Ever After,’ he became the youngest person in television history to appear in more than 100 episodes of two separate network shows. That distinction speaks to just how much of his childhood was already spent working steadily in the industry well before ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ turned him into a recognizable face nationwide.
Berfield’s version of Reese, the dim but endearing troublemaker constantly clashing with Frankie Muniz’s title character, became one of the show’s most beloved elements across its run, earning him a devoted fan following that has stuck with him well past the series’ finale. Looking back, it’s easy to see the Anakin audition as one of those only-in-Hollywood footnotes, a role that could have sent his career down an entirely different path had the casting gone the other way.
Instead, Berfield’s path led him toward a genre-defining sitcom rather than a genre-defining franchise, a trade that, in hindsight, worked out pretty well for both the actor and the show that made him famous. After ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ wrapped, Berfield largely shifted his focus behind the camera, eventually taking on production roles across film and television, including work developing and producing feature films, scripted series, and digital media projects.
It’s a reminder of just how unpredictable Hollywood casting can be, especially at the level of massive franchise searches involving thousands of hopefuls. A handful of different decisions in a casting room decades ago could have completely rewritten the trajectory of one of television’s most memorable early-2000s ensembles, and audiences would likely never have known the difference.
What If Justin Berfield Had Been Cast as Anakin Skywalker?
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