‘Ready or Not’ Star Samara Weaving Shares the Nightmare Audition That Involved Fifty Shades and Her Parents

Samara Weaving recently shared an old audition experience that she still remembers as one of her most uncomfortable moments, involving the Fifty Shades of Grey film franchise.

Weaving explained that she was not auditioning for the lead role of Anastasia Steele, but instead for her friend Kate, a character that was eventually played by Eloise Mumford in the final films. The audition process started normally, with a large group of actors all competing for the same role. But things quickly became chaotic for her after she returned to Australia.

After the initial audition, she said she flew back home and received unexpected news from her agent. She recalled, “I then fly back to Australia and my parents have a place at the South Coast which is like middle of nowhere. There’s nothing to do. There’s no one around. Very remote. I get a call from my agent going, ‘You’ve got a call back.’”

At that point, she needed to prepare for a callback but had no acting partners available to help her rehearse. That forced her to rely on her parents to read the script with her, which quickly turned into an awkward situation given the nature of the material.

Weaving described how she first asked her mother to help her run lines. The scenes, however, included suggestive dialogue that made the rehearsal extremely uncomfortable. She said, “Then I quickly realized the only people that I can read with is my mother or my father. And the scenes are like, ‘You did what? Where?’ And like, ‘How good was he?’…Like, I wanted to die dead.”

Her mother’s feedback did not help the situation either. According to Weaving, her mom kept interrupting her performance and commenting on her acting choices, which made it harder for her to stay focused. Eventually, she gave up rehearsing with her and moved on to her father.

However, the second attempt was no better. Weaving said her father also tried to act out the scenes in his own way instead of simply reading the lines, which made the situation even more uncomfortable. She explained, “And then I was like, ‘F-ck, I have to do it with your dad. I have to do with my dad. I have to do it with my dad.’”

She added that her father became overly committed to the performance, which made the exercise feel even more surreal. In her words, “So, he like took on the role of Dakota Johnson and it’s going, ‘It was amazing. Can you believe?’ I was like, ‘No, let’s shut this down.’”

After both attempts failed, Weaving ultimately decided not to send in the audition tape at all. She joked that the experience was so uncomfortable it felt like it would have required therapy afterward.

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