Vin Diesel Didn't Exactly Inspire Confidence With His First Pitch Black Audition
The goal for any actor is to reach a point in their career at which they no longer have to audition for roles. Studios know them, and want them in their films without making them jump through hoops. And there's a reason: auditions suck. There's a lot of pressure to deliver the goods, and chances are — to borrow a phrase from Eminem — you've only got one shot.
So with that in mind, it's understandable that some actors are better at auditioning than others. Vin Diesel, who has long since become a guy who simply gets offered parts and no longer needs to audition, is apparently not one of those actors. According to David Twohy, who directed Diesel in the cult sci-fi hit "Pitch Black," he's kind of terrible at it. And it was because Diesel struggled when he went in to read for the role of Richard B. Riddick that Twohy, who saw something in Diesel that the rest of the studio didn't, had to fight to get him in the movie. As the director told Yahoo! in a 2020 interview:
"He read in the room and he wasn't great, because that is not his gift — reading in a room, off a page. He really wants to inhabit a role. But by the time we brought back our lead candidates, Vin was off-book and you could tell he was the right choice at that point."
And it's a good thing Diesel was able to convince the studio he was the right guy for the job. Otherwise, the movie might have turned out ... very different.
Twohy was ... ahem ... under siege to cast a much different actor
These days, Steven Seagal is more of a punchline than anything. But there was an era in which he was a legitimate action star, despite having all the acting prowess of a box of packing peanuts. After all, this is a guy who — according to Hollywood legend — only had a career because of a bet. The studio at one point campaigned for Seagal in the lead role, and needless to say, Twohy wasn't looking forward to having the martial artist foisted upon him. It got to the point where Twohy even threatened to leave the film, but thankfully the studio relented, allowing him to cast Diesel in the part. And the director remains grateful, as he told Yahoo!:
"He saved me from a fate worse than death when the studio wanted to cast Steven Seagal as Riddick. I fought hammer and tongs to make that not happen, even though somebody along the line had promised [Seagal] the role. I had to unwind all that nonsense."
We're pretty grateful, too. We like "Under Siege" as much as the next fan of cheesy '90s action movies, but it's hard to fathom Seagal playing Riddick. We're not going to argue that Diesel is the world's greatest thespian, but he was certainly a much better fit for the role, as evidenced by the film's continued popularity and multiple sequels. Taking away his voice acting in "The Iron Giant" and as Groot, Richard B. Riddick has become the second most iconic role in Diesel's filmography, behind only Dominic Toretto. It feels pretty unlikely that an alternate version of "Pitch Black" starring Seagal would have produced anything more than a tepid reception and, in true Seagal fashion, a bevy of straight-to-DVD sequels.