I had no idea Ashley Tisdale affected the final Mean Girls cut.
Whether it's through completely changing their character arc, offering new lines and perspectives, or full-on ghost-directing a show, actors have way more of a say on how a TV show shapes up than many of us realise. Here are 23 examples:
1. Ashley Tisdale says a line she ad-libbed in her audition for Mean Girls ended up in the final movie.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / 20th Century Studios / Paramount Pictures
“I ad-libbed one line and they put it in the movie. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding me!’ I should’ve gotten a writers credit — just kidding," the High School Musical star said.
2. John Krasinski straight-up said "no" to letting his character Jim cheat on Jenna Fischer's character, Pam, with Cathy on The Office.
Laura Cavanaugh / FilmMagic / NBC
In his book Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office, he wrote, “My feeling is there is a threshold with which you can push our audience... I think that if you show Jim cheating, they’ll never come back.”
3. Prince loved New Girl so much he reached out to request a cameo, but on one condition; no Kardashians. Trouble was, the producers had already booked them for a party scene in his in-show home.
Fox
"It turns out that someone from Prince’s camp said like, 'Who are the celebrities? I hope it’s not a Kardashian," Deschanel said of the chaotic day on set. And Larmone Morris claims he actually spotted the stars on set: "Prince shows up early, so he’s sitting in video village, and he’s watching the screen, and he goes, 'What are the blank blanks doing here?' They said, 'Well, they’re in the show. They’ve been invited to a Prince party.' He goes, ‘They would never be invited to a Prince party.’”
4. Donald Glover helped to write the relationship between Shuri and T'Challa in Black Panther.
Theo Wargo / WireImage
The movie's director Ryan Coogler revealed that though they didn't change it too much, Donald Glover and his brother Stephen helped to write the script. "Donald and Stephen, they actually gave me notes on a draft... they had some cool insight," he said, adding, "We were looking at ways to highlight a few more character things, with specifically Shuri, where she pokes fun at her brother. Donald's one of the funniest people that I know, so he had some interesting ideas, and Stephen's crazy talented as well."
5. Although Warren Beatty wasn't actually in Misery, his criticism of a scene in its early stages changed the film.
Jerod Harris / Getty Images for TCM / Columbia Pictures
The actor almost took the role but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts. However, he got a preview at the script, which adapted the book's scene in which the wrtier's feet are cut off. Beatty thought this was too much, and eventually director Rob Reiner and producer Andy Scheinman took his advice not to main the character.
6. Russell Crowe co-wrote Gladiator's script because it was so far from ready when he first saw it. "It had 21 pages when we started shooting,” Crowe said. "Your average script is about 110."
Universal Pictures
"Well, it’s me and Ridley [Scott, the director] working together, but it’s also — you know, it’s the dumbest possible way to make a film,” Rusell said of the movie.
“We didn’t know what we were going to shoot, so we had to go back to my house—you know, me, him, and David Franzoni, one of the producers who was also the original writer — and try and work it out," he added.
7. According to Sam Elliott, Val Kilmer, and himself, Kurt Russell secretly directed Tombstone and even secured financing for the movie.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Hollywood Pictures
"I said to George [Cosmatos, the film's official director], “I’m going to give you a shot list every night, and that’s what’s going to be.” I’d go to George’s room, give him the shot list for the next day, that was the deal," the actor said.
8. Daniel Day-Lewis came up with his character's name, Woodcock, in Phantom Thread.
Universal Pictures / Focus Features
In fact, Paul Thomas Anderson refused to fully write the script before handing it to Day-Lewis, instead allowing him to edit and change the story as they went along. "Rather than go away and write a script and try to impress him, I was collaborating with him each step of the way as I was going, which was very helpful in terms of forming the story and the character," he said. Day-Lewis had such an impact, he almost got a writer's credit.
9. Jenna Ortega chose not to say a lot of scripted lines, including "oh my God, I'm freaking out over a dress, I literally hate myself," in Wednesday.
Netflix
It was one of many lines the actor chose to leave out when playing the iconic character, but it's the one she specifically named in a Netflix Q&A. "And I was blown away because that sounded like… It was just a bunch of little things like that", the actor said. "Where I felt like we were able to avoid a lot of dialogue in an attempt to make her sound human".
10. Crispin Glover is the reason The Thin Man is silet in Charlie's Angels.
Columbia Pictures
Cripsin Glover didn't like his character's lines, so he asked for them to be removed from the script. "The dialogue was just expositional", he told The Guardian.
11. When she first read the Cruel Intentions script, Reese Witherspoon thought Annette Hargrove, her character, was "too demure and too much of a woman influenced by a guy's manipulations." She then rewrote the character's dialogue with writer and director Roger Kumble.
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Releasing
"{Witherspoon] came and sat with me for a week, and we worked on the dialogue together. Annette was the character most removed from me. There's no way the movie would have its success if it weren't for [Reese's] talent as a writer," the director told Entertainment Weekly.
12. Jeff Bridges reportedly "basically rewrote the script" of Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. (and director Jon Favreau) during rehearsal.
Paramount Pictures
"The day before we were going to shoot, we get a call from the Marvel guy saying, 'Oh no, no, no. None of this is right.' So we would muster in my trailer and rehearse while the guys were in the studio tapping their foot, saying, 'When are they going to come?' We were still trying to figure out the [scenes] we were going to shoot," Jeff Bridges shared in Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable.
13. Speaking of, on Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr. would cut scenes short on the reg to get his scenes re-scripted.
Paramount Pictures
"Downey would be like, 'Time!' and I'd be like, 'We're shooting!' and he'd be, 'No, shut the cameras,' and we'd go back to the trailer, and we'd all write, because he wanted new lines," the director of the movie told CinemaBlend.
14. Paul Rudd helped Adam McKay to write the Ant-Man script.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures
After Edgar Wright, the original director and co-writer, left the project, the pair were forced to get writing. "I've always known Paul Rudd's a really good writer from improvising with him on set, but I had no idea he was that good... So the two of us holed up in hotel rooms on the east and west coast, and I think it was, like, six to eight weeks, we just ground it out and did a giant rewrite of the script," the director told Collider.
15. Meryl Streep thought Joanna's depiction in the novel of Kramer vs. Kramer (which was deliberately anti-feminist) sucked, and refused to take the part unless directors made her more rounded, complex, and interesting.
Columbia Pictures
She thought Joanna came off as "an ogre, a princess, an ass" in the book and demanded changes for the movie. She also wrote Joanna's courtroom speech (no wonder she won an Oscar for the part).
16. Mahershala Ali reportedly hated the upcoming Blade script after Bassam Tariq left the project — so much so that he helped to write a new one.
Amy Sussman / Getty Images for Deadline
17. When The Mummy (2017) was in production, Tom Cruise reportedly had script approval and helped to rewrite almost the entire screenplay.
Universal Pictures
He brought in two new writers, who happened to give his character more screen time and added a twist at the end of the movie.
18. Marlon Brandon reportedly refused to read the lines director Francis Ford Coppola wrote for his character Colonel Walter Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, and just went with his own vision instead.
Paramount Pictures / Lionsgate, Miramax / United Artists / StudioCanal / StudioCanal UK
The actor went method for the part and improvised a majority of his lines, the director said. To create the new script, he claims he recorded and wrote down the best of the actor's method mutterings and then combined that with inspo from The Heart of Darkness.
20. Meryl Streep's iconic line, "Everybody wants to be us" was originally "Everybody wants to be me" in The Devil Wears Prada, but she changed it.
20th Century Studios
21. Alan Rickman edited the script of Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves to avoid reading its "terrible" lines.
Warner Bros. Pictures
The actor hated the original script, telling The Times that he asked his friends Ruby Wax and Peter Barnes to edit it with him in his local Pizza Express.
"I said, 'Will you have a look at this script because it's terrible, and I need some good lines.' So he did, and, you know, with kind of pizza and bacon and egg going all over the script", the actor shared.
22. Anna Kendrick refused to let her character, Beca, kiss Theo, a music exec in Pitch Perfect 3 because she wanted to keep their relationship professional.
Universal Pictures
Speaking to Harper's Bazaar UK, the actor said that she didn't want to show the "fucking problematic" complication in a professional relationship between a recent grad and a high-level music executive. Fair does, to be honest.
23. Michelle Rodriguez didn't let her character Letty cheat on Dominic (Vin Diesel) in The Fast And The Furious.
Universal Pictures
"It was more of a Point Break idea,” she said. “They just followed the format without thinking about the reality of it. Is it realistic for a Latin girl who’s with the alpha-est of the alpha males to cheat on him with the cute boy? I had to put my foot down.”
“I basically cried and said, I’m going to quit and, ‘Don’t sue me, please — I’m sorry, but I can’t do this in front of millions of people,’” she added.
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