How The Residence Pulled Off That Huge Hugh Jackman Twist
Yes, The Residence is a murder mystery, but the biggest mystery is whether Hugh Jackman is actually featured in the Netflix show. We love all a good Whodunnit, but we also really love a “Is that really them?”
The Residence‘s premise revolves around a White House dinner that happens in order to strengthen Australian and US relations. Several Aussie celebs appear at the dinner like Kylie Minogue who plays herself in the show. However, the dinner is thwarted the Chief Usher of the President’s residence mysteriously dies. That’s when detective extraordinaire Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) and Eric Park (Randall Park) come and swoop in to investigate who actually murdered AB Wynter.
A running gag in the show is that Hugh Jackman’s face is never really seen in scenes, despite the constant references to him. Only his back and blurry side profiles make an appearance, but is it really him?
Is Hugh Jackman really in The Residence?
Nope! What you’ve been seeing in the series is a body double and not the real Hugh Jackman. Series creator Paul William Davies said that he wanted the Australian actor to be in it, but scheduling just didn’t work out. “We did try [to cast him], and he responded in a way that was very sweet and apologetic,” Davies told TV Line. “And he has nothing to apologize for. He’s Hugh Jackman! He’s busy. It just didn’t work.”
Davies’s plan was to keep Jackman in the script from the very beginning, with hopes that he could somehow squeeze in filming in his busy schedule. “I wrote Hugh in when I wrote the first episode and kept it going, with the hopes that maybe there was a chance with the schedule, that it would work out,” he told Variety. “I don’t know him, I’ve never worked with him, but I’ve only heard great things about him. There were people on the show that had worked with him on various things — people at Netflix — and my sense was very clear that if the schedule would’ve worked out, he would’ve been totally game for it, but it didn’t. And I thought, ‘Well, it’ll be fun [anyway].’ I think it’s just part of the humor of the show, so we left it in, and I thought that was a fun way to do it.”
As to who those talented men (yes, men plural) who played Hugh Jackman in The Residence? They were actors Ben Bigler and Justin Ellis Johnson. “I thought, you know what, I’ll do this in a way that’s fun and kind of leans into it,” Davies says. “It was a bit of a gamble, but I had fun with it, and I think we all kind of just embraced it.”
