Topher Grace Had Embarrassing Road to ‘That ’70s Show’ Starring Role

Topher Grace had quite the embarrassing series of events before landing his leading role on That ’70s Show. The former sitcom star is was most recently on television in the recently canceled . But Grace made his name on the Fox sitcom, his fifth acting gig in his career. According to Entertainment Weekly, though, it is how he landed the job that’s a surprise.

“I had a weird origin story where I was in a high school play, and I was really only in that because I sprained my ankle and I couldn’t be on the tennis team,” Grace tells EW. “I was at a boarding school in New Hampshire and the girl who did the sets, her parents were big-time Hollywood producers and produced That ’70s Show and Third Rock From the Sun.”

The next step didn’t come until after Grace had moved to Los Angeles and became a student at USC. The parents of his school friend reached out with a career-making offer to audition for the sitcom.

“I’d never auditioned for anything in my life,” he says. “This is how green I was, they said, ‘Bring a headshot and a resume.’ Ok, I can do a resume because I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, I worked at Sun Coast video; I know what that looks like…So I brought it, and it was like this terrible resume of jobs I did at the mall and the picture was me and my friends at Six Flags.”

From there, he miraculously got the role and has the benefit of hindsight to share some tips with his younger self. One thing he stresses is that he would want 19-year-old Topher to enjoy the process. The interesting takeaway is how we’ve come to a point in time where That ’70s Show’s premiere in 1998 is as far away from today as the setting of the series was the day it premiered.

“I remember thinking when I got the role, ‘The ’70s, what were the ’70s and bellbottoms?’ I had to do all this research,” he marvels. “Do kids who are 19, the age I was then, do they look at 1998 that way?”

JNCO jeans, low-risers, Tamogatchi and much more all point to yes when it comes to nostalgia. So if you’re not feeling old yet, you might feel it now.