90s action-comedy star Brandan Fraser is currently working his way back into the limelight on TV. Last year, he appeared in Danny Boyle’s Trust for FX, and now he’s entered the world of DC with a premium role on the DC Universe streaming series, Doom Patrol, as Cliff Steele, a racecar driver in the midst of self-destructive phase of his life who ends up in a life-threatening car accident. Saved, and turned into the ‘brain in can’ cyborg superhero Robotman, Cliff has to come to terms with ruining his past life, and the lives of others, by helping the other superpowered outcasts he finds himself surrounded with.

But this hasn’t been Fraser’s first brush with DC – he also auditioned for the role of Superman back in the early 00s, off the back of his success in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. This was when Brett Ratner was on board to direct a script by J.J. Abrams. At that point, the Superman reboot film was going under the working title of Superman: Flyby.

In a new interview with Syfy, Fraser ended up discussing his Superman audition after he was asked if rumors that he’d almost been cast as Reed Richards in Fantastic Four were true. They are not.

“No. I auditioned for Superman [the film that would end up as Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns]. I even wore the suit. It was cool, it was pretty cool. I mean, I didn’t get the job. It went away. Brett Ratner was a bit ‘woo hoo’ in those days, and that’s well documented. And that was a script J.J. Abrams wrote but it never got made. And it was freaking Shakespeare in space. It was so cool. It was worlds colliding and, it was really, really cool,” he said, adding “But you know, I hear he’s done well since then,” with a laugh.