Mena Massoud has done something in 2019 that not many other actors have done. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson hasn’t done it. Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ryan Reynolds didn’t either. Massoud can stand above all of those A-list male leads this year as the star of a film that earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office. But apparently, according to the actor, being the lead in Disney’s massively popular live-action remake, “Aladdin,” might have earned him a pretty great IMDB entry, but it hasn’t given him the career boost that you might expect.
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Massoud recently spoke to the Daily Beast about his fairly new career, while promoting his upcoming Hulu series “Reprisal,” and over the course of the interview, dropped a bit of a bombshell — the success of “Aladdin” has led to exactly zero auditions. That’s right, Massoud is the leading man in a film that earned a billion dollars but can’t find his way in front of a casting director.
“I’m kind of tired of staying quiet about it,” he said. “I want people to know that it’s not always dandelions and roses when you’re doing something like ‘Aladdin.’ ‘He must have made millions. He must be getting all these offers.’ It’s none of those things. I haven’t had a single audition since ‘Aladdin’ came out.”
He added, “It’s wild to a lot of people. People have these ideas in their head. It’s like, I’m sitting here being like, OK, Aladdin just hit $1 billion. Can I at least get an audition? Like I’m not expecting you to be like, here’s Batman. But can I just get in the room? Like, can you just give me a chance? So it’s not always what you think.”
Massoud earned his most recent role, in the aforementioned “Reprisal,” right after “Aladdin” finished filming. And interestingly enough, the showrunner didn’t even know that Disney was making a new version of the film and had no idea that Massoud was even in the cast when he was hired. So, while you might consider the actor lucky to be able to star in one of the biggest films of 2019, he’s just wondering when that good fortune might lead to some opportunities.
