“Josh Duhamel Says Wife Audra Was Cut from Ransom Canyon”

Josh Duhamel’s wife, Audra Mari, came so close to making her TV debut in Ransom Canyon.

Duhamel, 52, stars as brooding cowboy Staten Kirkland in the new Netflix series, which premiered on the streamer on Thursday, April 17, and he tells PEOPLE that Mari, 31, originally had a cameo in the show — but it didn’t make the final cut.

“My wife was on the show too. Yeah, she did a cameo,” Duhamel says during a joint interview with his costar Minka Kelly. “She was Davis’ girlfriend [that] he brought to the party, but they cut her out! Poor thing.”

Lamenting that they “put her through all that hair and makeup and cut her out,” Duhamel reveals that Mari, whom he wed in 2022, only discovered she didn’t make the cut when she watched the series with him.

“She saw it with me,” he says, recalling how excited she was that her scene was coming, only to wind up disappointed.

It was a feeling his costar could relate to, though. “Oh, we gotta pay our dues,” Kelly, 44, says. “We’ve all been left on the cutting floor.”

“It’s a cold business,” Duhamel agrees.

Kelly’s real-life partner, Dan Reynolds, also made a cameo in the Western series, but his appearance was not left on the cutting floor like Mari’s was.

The Imagine Dragons frontman, 37, appears briefly in episode nine in a scene with Staten (Duhamel) and Davis (Eoin Macken), and Duhamel says he “did a great job” despite his nerves.

“He’s an amazingly talented dude on many different fronts, but it takes one or two or three, maybe a couple, scenes, and all those nerves go away.”

Kelly, who has been dating the musician since 2022, says that Reynolds was “such a good sport” about the cameo and “down to play.”

“He’s a good dude,” Duhamel adds.

In Ransom Canyon, Kelly and Duhamel play longtime friends with an undeniable spark between them, and the Friday Night Lights actress says their chemistry both onscreen and off happened “immediately.”

“I remember we got together just to see what our chemistry would be like before we started shooting, and immediately, it was just like butter. I’m like, ‘Oh, this guy, we have such an easy exchange,'” she says.

“I felt so safe with him. I remember texting him right afterwards going, ‘I’m so excited I get to do this with you. I feel so safe with you.’ And that really just continued throughout the series. I just had a really great solid partner through this. And he’s so amazing.”