Sebastian Stan Reveals He Was Considered for the Role of Captain Kirk in ‘Star Trek’

Sebastian Stan is now a well-known name in Hollywood. He is currently promoting two upcoming films: The Apprentice, where he plays Donald Trump, and Thunderbolts*, in which he reprises his role as Bucky Barnes from the MCU. For Stan, Bucky is the role that launched his career.

He rose to fame as Bucky Barnes in the MCU. While his role started off small, he became a significant and beloved character, especially in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Recently, Sebastian Stan appeared on Justin Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused show. They had an interesting and lengthy conversation where Stan talked about his future projects and shared insights about his past career. During the chat, we learned a fascinating fact about him!

Horowitz and Stan talked about various parts of Stan’s life and career. We previously reported on Stan’s interest in playing the Riddler and how the Downey revelation at Comic-Con surprised him, even as an MCU cast member.

But did you know that Stan almost played Captain Kirk and even did a photoshoot for the role? There were other roles discussed as well, but here’s the part of the interview that confirms this:

If you can’t open the video but want to know what happened, here’s a transcription for you:

JH: What was… there must have been a close call or two, before Marvel, that you thought ‘This is going to be the one that changes everything,’ like, did you… you know… were you going up for Captain Kirk, Prince Caspian? Like, what were you, like…

SS: I… I went out… there were a couple things I didn’t get. I mean, that I really desperately wanted. There was a movie with Russell Crowe that I wanted so badly and, like, I didn’t get

Can’t remember the name of that. Um, there was another movie, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, that I wanted to get, didn’t get. Um… I remember losing a lot of stuff to like, Jon Foster at the time. Fost is a brother, but yeah… I, uh… I think Captain Kirk for JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, that was one of the first things I got very close to.

JH: Is that… I… I just threw that out of…

SS: Oh? I thought you knew that…

JH: I didn’t know that, but like, I could see it. I could see you being up for that.

SS: I… I remember I was really, really close and I… and I remember I had a screen test with him at Paramount Studios, and I remember, uh… my manager had me do, like, a separate photo shoot, uh… where I would try and replicate all of these William Shatner pictures just to send to him to see how much I looked like him and stuff. Anyway didn’t get it.

Um… and then I think I told you there was, uh… um… Green Lantern was another one that I… that I screen tested for. I remember getting there, and it was like me, Justin Timberlake, Jared Leto, um… Ryan Reynolds and maybe one other person. And I’m looking at these guys going, and I’m fucked.

There’s no way this is happening for me. Like, at all. But, you know, I would… you’d come close and it wouldn’t happen, and in a way, like, I got to tell you, I mean, looking back, I… I’m almost glad it didn’t, because I don’t know if I could have handled that level of attention like some of those guys you know.

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