Taylor Lautner, AKA Taylor Swift‘s best ex-boyfriend, has made a huge revelation on Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast which involved his role as Jacob Black in the Twilight franchise.
Lautner has undoubtedly impacted the formative years of teens worldwide due to his contributions to pop culture from the 2000s to the 2010s. He was Sharkboy in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, he famously dated Taylor Swift and they starred in Valentine’s Day together and he was Jacob Black in the Twilight movies.
Although he took a back seat from the limelight and dedicated his time to being a massive Swiftie, he recently spilled some tea on the famous Call Her Daddy podcast.
One of the biggest takeaways from the podcast episode was that he wasn’t supposed to be in the Twilight films after the first movie.
In the episode — which is titled “The Lautners” as his wife Taylor Dome was also involved in the interview — the Lautners got candid about how he almost lost his iconic role.
Dome began the conversation by asking Cooper if she knew that Lautner was supposed to be recast in the franchise. In reply to Dome’s bombshell and Cooper’s intrigue, Lautner got into the nitty-gritty of the ‘yuge revelation.
“They called me and said ‘thank you for your participation but we are recasting you for the rest of the franchise,’” he revealed.
When Cooper asked if it was due to his acting abilities in the first Twilight, Lautner explained that the recasting decision was always planned for the character of Jacob Black.
“My character in the first book was supposed to be this 16-year-old, little, scrawny boy and then in the middle of New Moon he transforms into this like 25-year-old, built, muscular man,” Lautner said.
“Their plan all along was to cast a 16-year-old — which they did, I was 16 at the time — and then they were gonna cast a mid-20s guy to carry on and be Jacob for the rest of the franchise.
“I had to fight for that role back.”
Lautner revealed that he knew that was the plan all along so he hit the gym as soon as the first movie finished filming.
“So when we got that call my team was like, ‘have you seen him recently?’ and they were like, ‘No, why?’ and they were like, ‘well you may wanna take a meeting with him or something,” Lautner continued.
“I had been hardcore working out for about nine months at this point and probably had about 20 or 25 lbs added at that point.
“They were surprised but they didn’t make it easy. I still had to re-audition. Thankfully Kristen (Stewart) was like ‘You’re not reading with any casting director, you’re doing that with me,’ which was very sweet of her and it all worked out.”
Although Lautner was able to bulk up, get shredded and keep the role, it did leave him with body image issues which he reflected on further in the podcast.
“I dealt in the last, you know, five to seven years with a lot of body image issues because, you know, in the franchise I’m not wearing that many clothes,” Lautner said.
“I also was 17/18/19 years old and it was a lot easier to have a body like that. But that’s like what people, what most of the world knows me as.
“When [people] see me at 30 years old, now they’re like ‘Whoa, what happened to happened to you?’”
Lautner added that he was “much better” with his body image issues, but it’s certainly “not perfect”.
Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the Twilight series or Lautner himself, I give him so much kudos for being honest about his body image issues as someone who experiences the same kind of dilemma of comparing what I was to what I am now.
I’m glad that he was able to secure the role because I think he did well from the movies I’ve seen — which is just Twilight — but it just sucks (no pun intended) that it cost him his mental health.
Lautner seems like a nice dude who’s tryna live out his best Swiftie life with his Swiftie wife. Love that for them.
