Randy Houser is right at home on stage playing in front of a crowd.
But acting in front of a camera? Apparently that’s a little out of the country star’s comfort zone.
While he’s obviously best known for his music, with hits like “How Country Feels,” “Boots On,” “Runnin’ Outta Moonlight” and “Like a Cowboy,” Randy’s also recently got into acting – but it seems like the opportunity came as a bit of a surprise.
On this week’s episode of TL’s Road House, Randy sat down with Tracy Lawrence and talked about how he got his first movie gig:
“It was just one of those fluke deals. [My manager] called me and asked if I would be interested in reading for a part for this film. And I’m like ‘I’m not an actor, but ok.'”
Well apparently, despite not being an actor, Randy impressed the casting director enough that he got called back for another audition, and then another – until he finally got the part.
And that film just happened to be directed by one of the greatest directors of all time, Martin Scorsese.
The movie is Killers of the Flower Moon, which tells the story of a series of murders in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma from the early 1920s after oil was discovered on the tribe’s land. The murders ultimately sparked an investigation by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and inspired the 2017 book of the same name by author David Grann.
But Randy’s not the only country star in the movie: Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell both have spots in the film, which stars some of the biggest names in Hollywood like John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.
So you can see how it would be intimidating for somebody making their acting debut – especially after watching somebody else botch their scene the day before he shot his.
According to Randy, he was in his trailer waiting to film his first scene when he was told that they wouldn’t be able to film his scene that day. But “Marty” (as he calls Scorsese) wanted to see him, so they took him to set to watch the filming, where he realized why his scene was being pushed back:
“Mind you now, I’m scared sh*tless…I had been up all night studying…
I go to set and I’m kinda just watching after I talk to Marty, and I’m watching this scene go down, and I’m watching this guy shoot this piece of a scene.
And it was nobody we’d know. And it was taking him entirely too long…
It was like at take 26 or something like that. And you could feel in the room that it was getting a little, ‘Ok, we’re spending a lot of money on this sh*t.’
It was gettin’ a little hairy in there. I could feel it, and you could see that everybody was getting a little aggravated.
And I was like, ‘Dear God, don’t let that be me tomorrow.'”
But it turns out Randy’s as natural on the silver screen as he is on the stage, and it earned him a big compliment from Leonardo DiCaprio himself:
“I did it the first time, did it the second time, the third time goes through…
The third time I remember there was a fly that goes on the table and Marty yells, ‘Action!’ and all of a sudden Leo comes over the table and, whop! Kills a fly on the table with his hand. And I’m like, that wasn’t in the script…
Well the second time out he comes up and gives me a little bit of direction, he’s over my shoulder right here and he’s talking to me kinda in my ear, want you to do this, do that.
The fourth time he comes out and says, ‘Ok Randy, we got it.’ And I was like freaked out. I was like, ‘We do?’
He was like, ‘Yeah, we got it, that’s great.’ And I was like, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
And Leo looks across the table from me and goes, ‘What do you mean you wouldn’t know?’
I was like, ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never done this.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Well you’d never know.'”
That’s pretty high praise from one of the top actors in the world right now.
Randy’s also done another movie called The Hill, which is also based on a true story of baseball player Rickey Hill, who was handicapped as a child but went on to play professional baseball.
Both of Randy’s movies will be released later in 2023, so if you want to see his acting skills in action, make sure to check them out when they’re released.
Sounds like he’s pretty good at this whole acting thing.
