Recently, the ER and the Good Wife actress Julianna Margulies appeared on the Armchair expert Podcast of Dax Shepard. Julianna in the show opened up her devastating hotel meet-up with Steven Seagal when she was auditioning for her first film role. Notably, Julianna, 54, spoke about meeting with the action star, who was armed with a gun, alone in his hotel suite ahead of appearing in ‘Out for Justice’ in 1991. Further, she mentioned that all this happened after the female casting director was a last-minute no-show. Margulies said she ultimately “got out of the room unscathed,” something she also details in her new memoir, Sunshine Girl.
The actress recalled, “I was straight out of college and all I wanted was my SAG card,” setting the scene. Furthermore, she stated, “I had given myself five years” to make a living as an actress. If it didn’t happen, she recalled saying, “I’ll quit and do something else — something worthy of my time. But I’m not going to beg. And I’m not going to live on a futon for the rest of my life. So right out of college, I had this agent and they sent me on the Steven Seagal audition. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t go to see those kinds of movies. That wasn’t my jam.”
she also stated that When the #MeToo movement happened and I heard women talking about things he had done, I was like, Yeah, I was in that hotel room. Although, she said “his shtick” about being a healer “gave me the courage to stand up and get out of there.
Julianna did her best while he was being auditioned. However, Steven Seagal was not present there at the time of the audition. Further, the night before her second audition, she got a call from the casting director. She was told that Seagal requested her to meet at his NYC hotel suite to prepare their scene for the next day.
When she got there, there was no casting director. she could just see the 6-foot-4 star who was casually holding a gun as they spoke in the living room. Soon after, he asked her to move to the bedroom to continue discussing her character, “a hooker with a heart of gold,” because he was tired after a long day.
