Adam Lambert turned down role as Lady Gaga’s gay best friend in A Star is Born
Adam Lambert has revealed he auditioned for a role alongside Lady Gaga in A Star is Born, but turned it down because the character was Latino.
The singer auditioned for the role of Ramon, Lady Gaga’s gay best friend, who was played by Hamilton‘s Anthony Ramos.
On Courtney Act’s podcast, Brenda, Call Me!, the singer said: “Do you know, it’s funny, I auditioned for that part in A Star is Born?
“It was so funny to me, because they told me about it and they were like, ‘She’s going to have like a gay best friend,’ and I was like, ‘OK that could be cute.'”
Adam Lambert, who is not Latin American, admitted he had reservations as soon as he saw the script.
“And then I got the script and it was like… he was a Latin American character, like he was a Latino character.
“You know, his name was Latino, a lot of the slang that he was using, he was calling [Gaga] ‘Mami’ and all this stuff and I was like, ‘Now how is this gonna work? Should I just not go to the audition? This is not my part.'”
He admitted that he didn’t think he would have got the part anyway because he “wasn’t Latin”.
The film, based on a 1976 film starring Barbara Streisand, earned Lady Gaga her Academy Award for Best Original Song for ‘Shallow’.
On top of his career as a singer-songwriter and actor, Adam Lambert also founded the Feel Something Foundation, a non-profit that supports LGBT+ organisations “moving the needle for communities of all ages and backgrounds”.
On behalf of the Foundation, he is hosting Pride Live’s fourth annual Stonewall Day, to increase awareness of the Stonewall riots and LGBT+ activism.
He will curate musical performances and presentations on 6 June for the event, as well as two 20-minute livestreams. The first stream was on 18 February and the second will stream on 22 April.
On the podcast, Adam Lambert called the event “a big virtual sort of queer Live Aid”.