Jesse Metcalfe regrets blowing off ‘Entourage’ audition, but script was ‘stupid’

Jesse Metcalfe could’ve been part of the boys’ club.

The Desperate Housewives actor recently revealed to PEOPLE at Southampton’s Annual Luxury Luncheon that he “had an audition for Entourage,” and had he booked the role, would’ve been handed a massive springboard to stardom early into his Hollywood career. But it didn’t quite play out like that.

“I read the pilot episode, and I was like, ‘This is stupid,’ and I didn’t go to the audition,” Metcalfe explained. “Obviously, I had no idea what I was talking about… That ended up being an iconic show that I absolutely love, and definitely wish I was a part of.”

It worked out well enough for Metcalfe, who landed a role the same year Entourage debuted that won him instant notice (and notoriety). He first appeared as John Rowland on the 2004 pilot episode of Desperate Housewives, which aired in October on ABC – just three months after Entourage premiered on HBO.

John was hired by Carlos (Ricardo Chavira) and Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) to keep the lawn and gardens of their Wisteria Lane home neat and tidy. But he quickly ended up in Gaby’s bed, making for one of the show’s most talked-about plotlines.

Metcalfe was a constant presence in the show’s first season, with diminishing returns in the second, third, fourth, and sixth seasons. Thereafter he booked another of his signature roles, the titular part in the revenge comedy John Tucker Must Die, and appeared in a main role on all three seasons of the 2012 Dallas revival.

Still, Entourage would have been major, especially since he would have been “auditioning for Adrian Grenier’s role.”

Grenier played Entourage‘s superstar protagonist, Vincent Chase, in each of the series eight seasons, and in the 2015 film. The series resulted in three consecutive Screen Actors Guild nominations for Grenier.

“I blew that one. Sometimes you gotta say no, but that was the wrong one,” Metcalfe reflected. “It taught me that I don’t know everything.”

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Metcalfe recently cast his mind back to a different project from his past, John Tucker Must Die, which has deluged the actor with fan questions about a reboot. Although he teased a potential reboot himself in 2024, just a year later he conceded that “it’s probably not gonna happen… They’ve been sitting on the script for a while. Everyone in the cast said they’d participate and it just hasn’t happened.”