Christina Hendricks may have landed the leading role in new Chris O’Dowd directed series, Small Town Big Story as Wendy Patterson, a hotshot TV producer in Los Angeles who is forced to face her past, but the actor has revealed that not every audition is a successful one.

Christina, best known for her portrayal of Joan Holloway on the critically acclaimed series Mad Men, told HuffPost UK how she had “such an embarrassing audition” for the world’s highest grossing movie.

When asked if she had ever auditioned for a role that would ‘surprise people’, the two-time SAG Award winner revealed that she had tried out for none other than James Cameron’s sci-fi franchise Avatar – with hilarious results.

“It was Avatar. [With these auditions], you know, it’s very top secret materials – so you have to come to the studio, and you have to only have the material there. [I was told], we’re gonna give you, like, four hours, and we’re gonna have a camera operator there and a director,” she explained in a recent interview with HuffPost UK.

So far, so normal.

“I had to crawl around on my hands and knees and howl like a dog and sniff –and they were gonna give it to Kate Winslet all along! That exists! That video of me howling at the moon is out there somewhere.”

Oh, maybe not.

Laughing at the absurdity of it, Christina added: “I tell you, I just got my car afterwards, and I was like, well, that was humbling.”

The role in question was for that of water-dwelling Na’vi warrior Ronal, who was ultimately played by Kate Winslet in 2022′s Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to the original 2009 Avatar movie.

Christina currently stars in warm, witty and very dramatic comedy Small Town Big Story. Set in a village full of secrets on the border of Ireland and another world, Hollywood TV Exec Wendy Patterson (played by Christina) returns to Irish border town Drumbán after 20 years to choose the final filming location for her big budget TV show ‘I AM CELT’ and to expose a decades-old secret she shares with respectable local doctor and family man, Séamus Proctor.

Small Town, Big Story will premiere on Thursday 27 February on Sky and streaming service NOW in the UK and Ireland.