Austin Abrams was determined not to 'f--- up' George Clooney and Brad Pitt's dynamic in Wolfs

"Be in a movie with George Clooney and Brad Pitt" wasn't on Austin Abrams' bucket list.

"It would've been If I had had the nerve to think about it or the audacity to think that it was possible," the actor tells Entertainment Weekly, laughing at what still seems like a surreal moment for him. "I don't know whose it wouldn't be on. It's insane to be able to do that, to work with these two guys that I've loved their work for so long."

In fact, Abrams — whose many credits include the TV series Euphoria, This Is Us, and Dash & Lily, and the films Paper Towns and Chemical Hearts — couldn't even believe he was auditioning for Wolfs, which finds him at the center of the action when Clooney and Pitt's characters, two rival fixers, both get the call to clean up a crime involving a New York City D.A. (Amy Ryan) and Abrams' character.

"I thought, 'This is stupid. Why am I making this [audition tape]? I'm not going to get this thing,'" Abrams recalls. "From there, it took me completely convincing myself that it was even possible to be able to do this in the first place."

After initially thinking Abrams' character, referred to as "Kid," died from overdosing on drugs that he was supposed to deliver for his dealer friend, the fixers are shocked to see him wake up in the trunk of Clooney's car. Much of the action in the crime-comedy, which broke Apple TV+ records the week of its debut to become the most-watched movie in the streamer's history, follows the guys over the course of one night in New York as they try to return the large quantity of drugs to whoever supplied them — and chasing down "Kid" after he escapes from their car wearing nothing but his tighty-whities, in freezing-cold winter no less.

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"The character is naive and feels like a person that is living very heart-forward, maybe not thinking through things as much, and in turn, getting himself into a situation where he was really just trying to help somebody out," Abrams says of what he enjoyed about playing "Kid." Things change, of course, once he "encounters these guys that he's at first scared of and intimidated by, and then starts to get more comfortable and feels like they're on his side a bit more."

Clooney and Pitt, longtime friends after starring together in the Oceans trilogy, have great ease with each other. While their dynamic is more adversarial here, Abrams fits in seamlessly with their back-and-forth sarcastic energy — though he admits the character's nerves probably helped mask some of his own.

"They're super warm guys and welcoming, so that was really helpful to feel comfortable," he says of rising to the occasion with the two powerhouse actors. "Working with these two guys, you do the best you can to fit into their dynamic because they have a great dynamic already, and you don't want to f--- that up. You're trying to be an asset in the best way that you can and keep passing the ball back and forth. And if the ball gets passed to you, then that's sick, and you pass it back."