Hollywood is a tough industry. Actors go on audition after audition waiting for a yes. One actor who was rejected from a role in a Ray Romano movie showed TikTok his audition and now the internet knows why he lost out on the role.


Tom D’Augustino or @homeschoolmusic on TikTok recalls the time he auditioned for Ray Romano’s directorial debut Somewhere in Queens. He got up to the top 10 choices for the lead role-playing Romano’s son, a star basketball player.


Production asked D’Augustino to submit a final tape with him playing basketball. He took a “two-hour masterclass watching Steph Curry videos” and made his basketball reel.


@homeschoolmusic Im so sorry Ray Romano ???????? #foryoupage #rayromano #marcmaron #somewhereinqueens #funny #basketball???? #acting #audition ? original sound - Homeschool


He did not get the part but interestingly enough, Romano talked about the difficulty of the casting process while on Marc Maron’s podcast, “WTF with Marc Maron.”

 

“You know how hard it is to find a good actor who plays basketball? You can’t do it!” he exclaims.


When watching back the basketball reels from the top 10 finalists for the role, Romano states, “Within 5 seconds we could see this kid’s never played basketball in his life.”


D’Augustino, thinking he had a great audition, inserts a clip of his basketball reel for the TikTok audience to decide.


The comments did not hold back in their review of the reel. Some great ones include: “It looked like you were auditioning to play basketball in a musical” and “Were you auditioning for The Sims Basketball game on CD-ROM?”


“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone skip like that after shooting” observes one commenter.


You suspend your disbelief a lot in films but no movie magic could make you believe that that kid plays D1. Hang it up, Troy Bolton!