Jennifer Lopez Reveals She Prepared for Weeks for Evita Audition, Only to Learn Madonna Had the Role

Jennifer Lopez missed out on starring in 1996’s Evita when Madonna won the lead role — but as Lopez recalls, she auditioned after the Queen of Pop already had the part!

When Lopez, 56, attended a post-screening Q&A for her upcoming movie musical Kiss of the Spider-Woman on Wednesday, Sept. 10, she remembered auditioning for director Alan Parker’s 1996 movie musical. “I went to audition for Evita for [director] Alan Parker,” Lopez said, per Variety.

“I had been practicing for weeks and I sing my heart out and [Parker] goes, ‘You’re amazing. You know Madonna has the part, right?’ ” she added. “I said, ‘Okay, bye-bye. Nice to meet you.’ ”

Madonna, now 67, went on to star in Evita as Argentinian First Lady Eva Perón. The movie received five nominations at the 1997 Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Parker, who directed the movie, died in 2020 at age 76.

Lopez last referenced her audition for Evita during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter back when Kiss of the Spider-Woman premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. “I remember auditioning for Evita, I remember auditioning for Chicago and for Nine — getting very close on Nine,” she said at the time. “There was a lot of things that I had always hoped that I could do and just wasn’t the right time. But this is the right thing.”

Nearly 30 years after Lopez lost out on starring in Evita, the actress and singer is starring in her first-ever movie musical with Kiss of the Spider-Woman, an adaptation of the 1993 Broadway musical. The movie follows two prisoners in a repressive South American prison — a Marxist revolutionary (Diego Luna) and a gay window dresser imprisoned for “immoral behavior” (Tonatiuh) — who escape their woes by imagining the story of a Hollywood musical starring the fictional screen star Ingrid Luna (Lopez).

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Lopez told PEOPLE at Sundance back in January that she filmed many of her musical numbers for Kiss of the Spider-Woman in one take, “like the old musicals authentically were done.”

“And it’s pretty amazing when you do see it and you go, ’Oh, that was all one shot right there,’ ” she said at the time. “And okay now they cut, but it’s fascinating, you know, you go, ’Oh I didn’t realize that even when I was watching the musicals when I was younger.’ ”

“A little extra challenge but also exhilarating, right? Like you gotta get it right. And when you nail it, everybody’s like, aah,” Lopez added.

Kiss of the Spider-Woman is in theaters Oct. 10.