Why Lukas Gage Was Fired From Mad Men (And The Nickname It Earned Him)

If you can't recall Lukas Gage's performance in AMC's acclaimed Emmy-winner drama, "Mad Men," don't you worry, your memory is just fine. In fact, if you could remember him on that show, there would be cause for concern. As the 30-year-old actor said on "Live With Kelly and Mark" (via Entertainment Weekly) recently, he was cast in Matthew Weiner's period drama and then got fired pretty shortly afterward — before he ever made it to the screen. This was because he was supposed to play a 15-year-old boy in the 1950s alongside Kiernan Shipka's Sally Draper in a scene in which he's shirtless. And that was a problem because Gage already had a giant tattoo on the left side of his upper body, which simply couldn't fly in such a specific historical series like "Mad Men."

As the actor recalled, when the crew saw him half-naked, he pretty much figured, "[I]t wasn't going to work. They could just recast it real quick." And that's exactly what happened. The whole thing quickly got awkward because Gage was already bragging to everybody about the role he had acquired. He said, "[I]t was one of the first jobs I got, and then they said, 'You're going home.' But if I didn't book that job, I wouldn't have booked the next couple [of things]." Later on, the fiasco earned him the nickname of "tattoo boy" from his fellow actors.

Although Gage didn't get to be on "Mad Men," he did get some form of consolation from the unforgettable Don Draper himself. As he recalled, not long after his firing, he ran into Jon Hamm by chance, and Hamm remembered him immediately. He said, "I was catering at the Emmys the next year, and [Hamm] remembered me and gave me a hug. And he said, 'Everyone has to get fired once in their career.'" This was certainly some much-needed solace because the young actor got a lot of flak from his agents at the time, blaming him for messing up such a huge opportunity early in his career. "I had these agents saying to me: 'How could you ruin this? How could you mess this up?' I don't think that was the greatest thing for a teenager to hear when they've just lost something that big," the "White Lotus" actor told The Guardian.

Thankfully, this mishap actually propelled his career in the right direction. After the firing, Gage continued to get roles in TV shows like "Confess," "American Vandal," and Sam Levinson's hit teen drama, "Euphoria," which was his first big break. Yet most viewers probably best remember him as Dillon from the first season of Mike White's series "The White Lotus." Ever since, he's become busier than ever, doing both features and television on a regular basis. In the past few years, he has appeared in the "Road House" remake alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, the mainstream horror sequel "Smile 2," and Drew Hancock's darkly funny AI horror, "Companion."

It might've hurt him at the time, but looking back, getting fired from "Mad Men" may have been the best thing that happened to his career.