Miles Teller popped up in early reports regarding Lucasfilm’s shortlist for Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s young Han Solo movie, along with a handful of interesting contenders for the upcoming Star Wars spinoff. And while an actor has yet to be chosen to fill Harrison Ford’s intimidating shoes, Teller has confirmed that he did audition for the part while also acknowledging some problems on that other major franchise film he appeared in last year.

Yes, that would be Fantastic Four. Josh Trank’s troubled reboot was extensively reported on throughout production, with rumors aplenty of the director’s unprofessional behavior and conflicts with the studio over creative differences. Appearing on the Happysadconfused podcast, Teller addressed the problems with the reboot, which underwhelmed and underperformed at the box office, assuring listeners that everyone involved tried their best to make a good film:

People think that when you make something like a Fantastic Four that doesn’t do well, people think ‘Oh you phoned it in’ and it couldn’t be more untrue. You work harder on the bad films, or the films that turn out maybe not the way you intended, because something’s not working. And I thought it was kind of unjustly critiqued that way; there are even bigger bombs if you’re looking at how much money went into the production and what they reaped back. But I think it’s unfortunate a movie like that becomes a scarlet letter on a resume when so many talented people worked really hard and maybe a handful of people took it in a negative direction. But so many people worked really hard on that that are so talented.

Unsurprisingly, Teller says that the Fantastic Four script was constantly being worked on throughout production, which isn’t unusual — particularly for big budget studio films. Even Marvel has designated on-set writers for their superhero movies because scripts tend to change during filming as creatives see what is and isn’t working. As Teller explains, you’d be pretty lucky to sign on to a film that already had a perfect script set in stone:

I think it was Clooney who said you can make a bad movie out of a good script, you can’t make a good movie out of a bad script, and that’s very true. If they’re telling you maybe your part’s not as big and they say, ‘Oh you’re gonna be bigger in the sequel’ or ‘Oh we’re gonna rewrite’ and ‘Yeah we’re gonna take in all these notes,’ if you’re in a position where you can say hold off I’m not signing off on this dotted line until this script is exactly where you want it, then you’re in a very fortunate position. Because I know actors that have been in literally Oscar-winning performances that told me that script was a struggle every day to get it to a place that [they] wanted it, and [they] were always fighting for the best version of it.

As for Star Wars, the actor confirms that he auditioned for the role of young Han Solo in Lord and Miller’s spinoff, and reveals that he had never seen any of the original films until recently:

I had never even seen any of the original Star Wars movies until maybe a month or a couple weeks before my first audition because I was like, ‘I should check this out’ (laughs). It holds up. I just love Harrison Ford, I think that’s a great character. I love his brand, I mean so many guys would’ve played that part so wrong and he has humor at the right times. Harrison Ford is a very big actor, when you see the facial expressions and the things he does he goes big, but he’s just always the coolest guy in the room and he’s got all of those great qualities.

Teller was one of the earlier names on the shortlist for the Han Solo movie along with Dave Franco and a few others. Recent reports have Taron Egerton, Hail, Caesar! star Alden Ehrenreich and Jack Reynor in contention for the part. The actors have already participated in screen tests, so it shouldn’t be much longer before Lucasfilm makes a formal announcement.

More From 1073 Popcrush