Fire Island's Matt Rogers Reveals He Auditioned for Atlas in It Ends With Us: 'I Had to Cry' and 'Be Straight'

Fire Island actor Matt Rogers revealed he auditioned for an “atypical” role — and it didn’t exactly go to plan.

On the Aug. 14 episode of his Las Culturistas podcast, the comedian, 34, told co-host Bowen Yang that he filmed an audition tape for the character Atlas Corrigan, Blake Lively’s on-screen love interest in It Ends with Us.

Before diving into the ongoing drama among the film’s cast and crew, including director-star Justin Baldoni, Rogers said, “I actually auditioned for this movie. I got a new agent, and I think he was trying to send me on more atypical things.”

“Okay, this was funny,” he continued, adding that he filmed the tape during “the week of my breakup last year.”

“I was crying every day, sobbing every day, and I had to cry on this tape — but I also had to be straight,” he said. “I had to manage how to maintain my emotion but also seem like a love interest of Blake Lively, who, by the way, was named Atlas.”

“Gotta cut it out with this name,” he joked of the character, which was ultimately played by Brandon Sklenar in the film.

Rogers continued with a laugh, “It was just so funny because me crying as a straight man I don’t really think plays.”

Added Yang, “Well, you were raw enough to deliver on the crying but … it’s too much, the wires get too crossed.”

Rogers, who also appeared on the series I Love That for You, added, "Because it’s like, you’re not supposed to have those checkpoints where you’re thinking too hard about how you’re expressing the emotion, the emotion should just be there or in a way that you can restrain it then give it. Meanwhile, I was not in control of my emotions.”

“And you think, ‘Oh, this is a great opportunity to go on tape for something emotional because I am,’ and then it just didn’t match up with whatever,” he continued, before joking that he “obviously didn’t book” the role. 

“You’re not going to see me making love to Blake Lively in cinema, I don’t think, anytime soon,” he added.

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In It Ends With Us, an adaptation of the bestselling Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, the role of Atlas ultimately went to Sklenar, 34, while Baldoni played Ryle Kincaid.

Bringing Hoover's hit novel to life was a rollercoaster, Sklenar shared earlier this summer. "I mean, it's been a trip. Honestly, I had no expectations of these things, and I've been kind of blown away with the response to everything,” he said during a June 14 Book Bonanza panel.

Elsewhere during the event, he revealed that the most challenging part was playing “a character where there's so many people’s idea [of] who he is and how he's meant [to] be, how he's meant to look.”

“Just sort of divorcing yourself from that and letting yourself, you know, do your thing with it and not be weighed down by what you think people might want to see or how they want to see it,” Sklenar added at the time. “And just sort of let that go and just do what you do.”

It Ends With Us is in theaters now.