This Peacemaker Star Auditioned By Beating Up A Mannequin With A Future Co-Star's Face

Almost every actor who has been in the business for a little while has at least one bizarre audition story, like when Nicholas Galitzine had to pretend to be hiding an orange from someone for a cringe-inducing Tarzan audition. But in the case of Nhut Le, the oddball decision was all his idea. On an episode of the official "Peacemaker" podcast, where the discussion focused on the season 2 episode "Like a Keith in the Night," Le revealed that he had all but given up on acting entirely when he was cast as Judomaster on the hit HBO Max series. He also revealed that his audition tape featured him beating up a mannequin with future co-star John Cena's face taped to it. 

Since Judomaster does a whole lot of beating the crap out of Cena's character, the titular Peacemaker, it sort of makes sense for Le to include that in his audition, but just picturing it is really funny. What makes it even more bizarre is that he had just finished having his wisdom teeth removed, making for an audition tape for the ages. Le has been one of the most fun breakout stars of "Peacemaker," playing the mysterious, Cheeto-crunching martial artist, so it's a darn good thing he didn't give up on acting and tried some unorthodox auditioning tactics — otherwise he might just be making pottery in Philadelphia, and we'd be all the poorer for it. 

According to Le, casting took place during the early part of the pandemic, and he had recently decided to move back to his home state of Pennsylvania and teach pottery full time after more than a decade in Los Angeles. Just before that, he had sent in audition tapes for "Peacemaker." And that ended up changing his life. The first tape was standard combat with weapons because he knew the role was action heavy, and the casting department asked for footage of him doing hand-to-hand combat. To do that, Le got a little creative:

"And so I'd just gotten my wisdom tooth out when I get this call, and I'm like, 'Okay, yeah, I'll turn it right in.' ...I'm holding my jaw so I can't speak, but you can't say no. Just got to do it. I got it, and so I send that in, and then they sent me the sides to do it. And I remember, at this point, I had a little mannequin at my house. [...] So I printed out John's face on a piece of paper and taped it onto this mannequin. I was doing all of the Judomaster bits around this mannequin with, like, eating chips and, like, rubbing it on him."

There's a scene in season 1 where Judomaster torments a tied-up Peacemaker, and apparently Le's audition tape of that moment was enough to seal the deal and make him a sneakily lovable part of the series. Since his introduction in season 1 he's gone from true enemy to frenemy to possible future 11th Street Kid, and here's hoping he's a part of the DCU for as long as Le wants to stick around.