Let's face it, it isn't easy to find help, and it's inevitable that you'll go through a whole score of awful interviews before you find the one, if you're lucky. But in most instances, it's almost always the last person you speak with who'll do. Ironically, the last interviewee often shows up late, which would make them look unprofessional and less qualified in a real life job interview. Sometimes, it's because there's nobody else left and the interviewer is desperate enough, or because the moment they find the perfect match they cancel all further interviews.
Sister Trope to the Terrible Interviewees Montage. Compare Hired on the Spot and Last Girl Wins.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- West Coast Avengers (2018): Following a string of subpar wannabe superheroes auditioning to be on the team, Kate Bishop immediately signs up the last candidate, Gwenpool... who didn't even realize this was an audition and just came by the WCA HQ to ask Kate if she wanted to go get some tacos.
Fan Works
- The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan: Night Apprentice Nova Shine is made to interview potential candidates for his counterpart, the Faithful Student. He goes through several, but none of them are ones he would recommend to Princess Celestia to take on as her student. The final candidate to interview (and historically the first Faithful Student, which Nova already knew) was Clover the Clever, and she was the single pony who made it through every question demonstrating a clear desire to learn.
Films — Live-Action
- Audition: After a Terrible Interviewees Montage, Asami is the last candidate shown onscreen being interviewed by Aoyama and Yoshikawa, and ends up being the candidate that Aoyama pursues romantically.
- High School Musical: Played with. After a series of Hopeless Auditionees, Sharpay and Ryan audition for the lead roles and blow the competition out of the water, making them shoo-ins for the roles, playing the trope straight. However, after hearing Troy and Gabriella sing a duet outside of auditions, Darbus brings them, along with Ryan and Sharpay, back for call backs. During the call backs, Troy and Gabriella perform second and win the spots in the musical.
- Mrs. Doubtfire: When his ex-wife is looking for a babysitter for their kids, Daniel Hillard uses his voice acting skills to fake a number of terrible phone interviews before doing the last one as the titular Mrs. Doubtfire and getting the job.
- Mystery Men: After the titular heroes sit through some terrible interviews with some fellow wannabe superheroes, they're giving up on seeking help when the Bowler shows up, and after initially being turned down, she uses her super-powered bowling ball against them to prove her worth.
- The Producers: Max, Leo, and director Roger DeBris are auditioning performers for the lead role in Springtime For Hitler. Roger rejects each and every one, but as they are wrapping up, dimwitted hippie Lorenzo St. DuBois arrives. He came to the wrong audition, he performs a ridiculous song about love and flowers, he seems generally out of it half the time...in other words, he's perfect for Max's scheme to make the worst play on Broadway.
Max: That's our Hitler!
- The Untouchables: Eliot Ness and Jimmy Malone go to the Chicago Police Academy seeking a trainee to serve them (since they aren't already bribed by Al Capone's empire). They ask to speak to the top two shooters in the class, Wallace and Stone, who are interviewed one at a time. Wallace is the top shooter, however, he stutters so much that he can't even give a straight answer. Stone, on the other hand, shows that he can stand up for himself after Malone uses an anti-Italian slur against him, and he's picked as an Untouchable.
- War of the Wizards: In the 1978 Taiwanese movie, a newly rich man interviews a series of people to be his bodyguard. As each candidate comes in they kill the prior one. In this situation, being last in line is a definite advantage.
Literature
- The Famous Five: In Five Go Adventuring Again, Uncle Quentin chooses a tutor for the children. He interviews three applicants and has almost chosen the last one, when another man comes in, all in a hurry, who has only just seen the advertisement, and hopes he is not too late. Uncle Quentin chooses him, saying the tutor even knows about Uncle Quentin and his work.
- The Night Circus: When Chandresh is hosting auditions for the magician of his circus, he isn't merely looking for the best applicant. He's looking for someone so good that they transcend what you believe is possible. When Celia shows up and meets this impossible standard, Chandresh cancels the rest of the auditions and sends the rest of the applicants away, making her the last interviewee, even if the schedule didn't originally list her as such.
Live-Action TV
- Frasier: Frasier interviews several candidates to find a physical therapist for Martin, who keeps turning them down for increasingly frustrating reasons (he says the last one was casing their apartment). The last interviewee is perky, whimsical Daphne Moon, whom Martin immediately takes a shine to and he hires her on the spot.
- Girls5eva: Subverted. After Wickie tries to go solo again at the end of the season, the remaining three members hold auditions to find a replacement. After a series of Hollywood Tone-Deaf Hopeless Auditionees, the last girl they audition seems like a perfect fit, and they offer her the job on the spot. But immediately after, she gets an email saying she was accepted into nursing school and backs out, to their dismay.
- iCarly: Zig-Zagged. When the group is looking to hire an intern, they go through multiple bad interviewees before getting to the charismatic and intelligent Brad, who seems perfect for the role...only for yet another interviewee to show up — Brainless Beauty Cort, who gets hired immediately by the girls. Freddie does everything in his power to get the girls to fire him, and soon enough Brad is given the intern position.
- Happens in two different episodes of Kenan & Kel, both at the end of a Terrible Interviewees Montage.
- In "Pair-Rental Guidance" Kenan interviews actors to pose as his parents and picks the last ones that show up who are the only ones convincing enough.
- In "Skunkator vs. Mothman", Chris alongside Kenan and Kel try find a new employee to work at Rigby's; the last one they see is Sharla Morrison, who gets the job and becomes a reoccurring character.
- Men Behaving Badly: The first episode of Series 2 has Gary trying to find a new flatmate. After a Terrible Interviewees Montage, he eventually settles on Tony, the last person to be interviewed. For bonus points, Tony showed up late.
- Odd Squad: When Oscar and Dr. O are looking for qualified agents to run the newly-built Creature Room at Precinct 13579, they interview a host of candidates for the position. All of them end up on the interviewing team bar the final candidate, Ocean, who demonstrates his strong penchant for caring for odd creatures and ends up being hired for the position based on that and the fact that he's the last interviewee.
Podcasts
- Acquisitions Incorporated: Double Subverted, as after Aeofel quits, the company's core members hold tryouts for the next intern by putting interviewees through a Death Course to see who survives. The final applicant, K'thriss Drow'b, is also the first one to survive the course — but just as he is about to be hired, he is shanked in the back and killed by Viari. Viari then proceeds to run the course uninvited, finishing it in a fraction of K'thriss' time, but the core members still lean towards turning him down, anyway, because he showed up late. They relent, however, after he manages to pull a novel magic card trick on Jim Darkmagic himself (while K'thriss is revived and eventually joins the company's "C-Team" in the eponymous spinoff series).
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: In "Joker's Millions", after becoming a millionaire, the Joker looks for a new Harley Quinn, since the true one is in Arkham. After several bad candidates, including a guy in drag, he finds a near-perfect lookalike, although she's hard on his ears.
- Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes: In the episode "The Cure", the Fantastic Four are looking for a new powerhouse after Ben is cured of his affliction but has also lost all of his memories of ever being a superhero. After a string of failed auditioners, mousy Jennifer Walters is the last to step up to the plate. Johnny immediately mocks her and insists that whatever superpowers she has must be cool... right before Jennifer turns into She-Hulk and makes Johnny scream like a little girl. Jennifer is hired on the spot.
- The Simpsons: "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show" has the Itchy and Scratchy studio host auditions for a new character, Poochie. The first applicants are Troy McClure and Otto, who are praised, but Homer (who came last) has the best performance.
Real Life
- By his account, Charles Martinet was the last person to show up for the auditions for voicing Nintendo's Mario, and the casting crew were packing up their things by the time he arrived. He then improvised a voice for Mario until the recording tape ran out, and thus voiced Mario and much of his supporting cast from 1995 until 2023.
- According to Russell T Davies, Ncuti Gatwa was the last person to audition for the role of the Fourteenth Doctor in Doctor Who. Gatwa showed up so late, in fact, that Davies was already preparing to hand the role to someone else; he was so blown away by Gatwa's audition, however, that he decided to give him the role.
- During the casting for Batman: The Animated Series, co-creator Bruce Timm and voice director Andrea Romano were at their wits' end trying to find the perfect actor to portray the Caped Crusader after more than a hundred auditions. According to Timm, his team was, "so desperate that anybody who would walk through the door... we would say, 'Oh, by the way, would you be interested in playing Batman as well?'"
That's when Timm's roommate, a casting director, recommended stage actor Kevin Conroy for the role. Conroy's audition left the entire team in Stunned Silence at how suited his voice was. Then the rest is history.
- This is how Renae Jacobs was cast as April O'Neil in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Stu Rosen, the voice director, did not approve of her in the role and only showed her audition tape to the producers after he ran out of all the other ones. After she got the role, Rosen told her:
"Well, every one I played, the producers said 'No, no, no, that's not April,' and finally I was out of people to show them, so I pulled your audition out and played it for them and they said 'That's April!' So you got the role."
