Stranger Things star David Harbour told he was too fat to play obese supervillain The Blob

It’s probably time to take a long, hard look in the mirror when people are telling you that your physique might be a shade too girthy for you to play a morbidly obese supervillain.

Such was the experience of David Harbour, star of Netflix smash ‘Stranger Things’, and soon-to-be the new Hellboy.

In fact, he tells a part-funny, part-tragic story about his experience being turned down for the role of Blob in 2009’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’.

“I auditioned for one of the ‘Wolverine’ movies and I bumped into one of the casting directors on the lot, and she was really sweet and she was like — I’m never in town, I’m always in New York — ‘oh my god, David Harbour, you’re in town! I have the perfect role for you,’” he told The Wrap.

“I was like, ‘great, I need to work, what do you got?’ She’s like ‘THE BLOB!’”

“‘The Blob?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, it’s like an X-Men, he’s like big, fat and controls gravity’ and I was like ‘Okay, wow, that’s flattering.’ And she was like, ‘no, no, it’s not that you’re fat, it’s just that we need a big guy to wear the suit.’

And so it was that he got through the door for an audition, one which he punctuated by lifting his shirt at the end of the reading, grabbing his belly and saying ‘I got your Blob right here!’

Rather than securing him the role, it did the opposite.

“I just made a stupid joke and then they called me and the director, we met at like a hotel, and he was like, ‘David, look, you’re wonderful, we really think you’re just a great actor, we’re just concerned… we’re really concerned,’” he went on.

“I was like, ‘Why, what’s your concern? I’m good to go. I’m available, let’s do this!’ And they were like, ‘no, it’s just, you lifted up your shirt and we saw the… we’re just a little worried about your health.’”

“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, dude, pause for one second… You are telling me I’m too fat to play The Blob? That’s awesome, I have to get the f**k back to New York.’ That’s my audition — so I didn’t get The Blob.”

Kevin Durand got the job in the end. But David Harbour did get a good story. So that’s something, right?

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