It was no laughing matter.
“Stranger Things” star Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays lord of the “upside-down” Vecna in the Netflix series, has come a long way since he bombed his audition for the hero role of the “Harry Potter” franchise — if only his penchant for naughty jokes hadn’t gotten the best of him.
The 33-year-old actor revealed the blunder while appearing on Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast.
As Bower tells it, the young actor had a meeting with the film’s first director, Chris Columbus, for which he was asked to prepare a joke.
“I had just heard this joke about a fairy,” recalled Bower.
“Like, the reason why the fairy sits on top of the Christmas tree. And it’s a really, like, dirty joke, because it’s about the Christmas tree up somebody’s bottom.”
The “Twilight” franchise star continued to describe how awkward things got after the punchline flopped.
“And I told this joke in the audition, and there was again, this sort of air of silence after I said it. And I was like, ‘Well, f – – ked that up,’ ” joked Bower.
Even though he lost the title role to Daniel Radcliffe, Bower still managed to appear in the franchise as a young Gellert Grindelwald in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” and again in the spinoff “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.”
Apparently, he’d cleaned up his act by the time he landed his role as the dark wizard.
“Simon said, ‘Well, Jamie [is] now, you know, properly working, and is not telling too many rude jokes anymore,” joked the actor.
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