X-Men Star’s Weird Audition & Inspiration For Beast Both Paid Off One Of Family Guy’s Most Underrated Jokes

Marvel’s Beast actor Nicholas Hoult recalls his weird audition requests and preparation for his X-Men role. Beast appeared in six of Fox’s thirteen X-Men movies — twice played by Kelsey Grammer, in X-Men: The Last Stand and a cameo in X-Men: Days of Future Past; and four times by Nicholas Hoult, in X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Kelsey Grammer played a seasoned version of Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast, whereas Nicholas Hoult played a younger, more involved variant of the character.

At MEGACON Orlando 2025, where ScreenRant was in attendance, Superman and X-Men actor Nicholas Hoult spoke about his unconventional casting audition experiences. Hoult mentions one where he had to bark his lines, and when asked about whether that audition was for X-Men, he revealed that his Beast audition required him to play the hero like Family Guy character Stewie Griffin. Hoult says:

“There was one where there wasn’t a language for the character, and you had to just bark. It was basically ‘do it in English’ and then they had to pretend to talk to another character, and bark. And they’d bark back. [when asked if that was for First Class]… The weirdest request in [the First Class] audition was ‘do one take as Stewie Griffin'”

Nicholas Hoult also reveals one of the inspirations behind his Beast portrayal. According to Hoult, he partially modeled his Hank McCoy performance on Frasier‘s Niles Crane, played by David Hyde Pierce. Hoult recalls:

“Before we did First Class, I watched a lot of Frasier. I would walk around and be like Niles. I was trying to get the accents”