In 2002, Chris Evans was an up-and-coming young actor who’d made a vivid impression on Millennial viewers by spoofing Ali Larter’s whipped-cream bikini from “Varsity Blues” in “Not Another Teen Movie.” His Jake Wyler was a silly parody of a jock, which maybe wasn’t ideal as a breakthrough performance (in that it could lead to typecasting), but he was already in demand as a TV actor. He’d appeared on the short-lived Fox sitcom “Opposite Sex” with burgeoning stars like Milo Ventimiglia and Allison Mack, in addition to landing guest roles on “The Fugitive” and “Boston Public.” Like every other promising young actor, he just needed to find the role.

When you’re in this acting limbo like this, waiting for the part that may never materialize, you might find yourself ending up in a television pilot that fails to get picked up. This happened to Evans in 2002 when he appeared as a high school student named Adam in a TV rendition of “The Witches of Eastwick.” Based on the dark fantasy novel by John Updike, the material had already proved a big screen success via George Miller’s star-studded 1987 film adaptation. When you’ve got a devilish Jack Nicholson being conjured up by three frustrated single women played by Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon, you’re going to draw a crowd. But when you slot Jason O’Mara, Marcia Cross, Kelly Rutherford, and Lori Loughlin into those same roles, you’ve got some sellin’ to do.

“Eastwick,” as the TV pilot was dubbed, was set up at Fox, and, alas, the network wasn’t buying it. 24 years later, just about all evidence of its existence has been buried.

The “Eastwick” pilot was written by Jon Cowan and Robert L. Rovner, who, like Chris Evans, were just getting their feet wet on television. It was also directed by Primetime Emmy Award-winning “NYPD Blue” veteran Michael M. Robin, which gave it a decent pedigree. Marcia Cross was probably the biggest name in the cast coming off her long run on “Melrose Place,” though Lori Loughlin was well-known for her “Full House” work. Respectively, they took the Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer parts, which left poor Kelly Rutherford to measure up to the iconic Cher.

The pilot is nowhere to be found online, so I have no idea what, exactly, went wrong. I also have no idea how Evans fared as Adam. Judging from the publicity stills of him clutching a football, however, the project once again had him playing a jock.

A different iteration of “Eastwick” eventually made it to primetime as a series on ABC in 2009, with Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price, and the always delightful Jamie Ray Newman playing the trio of conjurers. Meanwhile, Paul Gross (“Due South”) caught the unenviable task of playing Jack Nicholson’s Daryl Van Horne for the show’s single 13-episode season. Perhaps this is merely a cursed property.

As for Evans, he vaulted to stardom in 2005 as Johnny Storm in “Fantastic Four” (a role he reprised almost 20 years later as a joke in “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and ultimately found his franchise role in 2011 as Captain America. I feel for Evans completists who can’t access his performance as Adam in “Eastwick,” but I’ve got a feeling the actor wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s his “The Day the Clown Cried.”