Sam Claflin Reenacts “Bad” Dance Audition For ‘Cats’ on ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’: “I Couldn’t Do It”

Sam Claflin may not have had much singing experience prior to starring in Daisy Jones & The Six, but did you know he was almost a part of one of cinema’s greatest musical flops of the century? During today’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the actor dished on his “bad” dance audition for the 2019 musical film Cats.

Claflin — who appeared on the daytime talk show alongside the rest of the Daisy Jones & The Six cast — told host Drew Barrymore that his “experience with musical auditions has never gone great.”

While Barrymore confirmed that we “won’t think that” when we see him starring as Billy Dunne — the lead singer of the fictional 1970s rock band in the new Prime Video series — Claflin only went on to prove his point.

“I auditioned for Cats — the musical phenomenon that was Cats the movie,” he said. “Let me just tell you — the dance part of that audition was something to behold.”

Claflin continued, “I remember standing in the waiting room and all the guys and girls there were all ballet dancers and of course, I had never had any ballet training before.”

When the Love, Rosie star revealed that they “tried” to teach him ballet, his co-star Riley Keough jokingly demanded, “Show us the dance.”

Claflin then stood up and explained that he thought he was merely going to have to act like a cat for the audition — purring, meowing, licking his paws, etc. However, he said that there was “none of that.”

“There was  basically a guy on this huge stage — and this guy came out in the audience and he was like, ‘Let me teach you the dance. Five, six, seven, eight,'” Claflin recalled, before breaking out into a dramatic kick ball change and finishing off with a spin.

As he sat back down on the couch next to Barrymore, he confessed, “That’s not it. That wasn’t it. I’m just making that up,” and added that it all went downhill from there when he couldn’t even figure out the “first move.”

“I couldn’t do it. It was bad,” Claflin admitted, though he probably dodged a bullet as Cats — which starred Judi Dench, Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift — went on to lose more than $70 million for Universal Pictures and only scored a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays on CBS. You can check the website for local airtimes.