Lost Out On Lead Role In ‘Sucker Punch’ Due To Clash With ‘Big Love’ Schedule
Think back to the heady days of 2004, when you first saw Tina Fey’s minor classic of the teen movie genre, “Mean Girls.” You, like the rest of us, probably thought that the biggest star to graduate from that film would be its lead, Lindsay Lohan, who gave an endearing, goofy performance that suggested a long career was ahead of her. Instead, a whole bunch of drugs intervened, and Lohan is basically now unemployable, leaving her co-stars to lap her in the stardom stakes. Well, not Lacey Chabert so much, but both Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried have become some of the biggest female stars of their generation.
Seyfried in particular has found a fairly solid audience off the back of “Mamma Mia!“, bringing in consistent numbers with projects like “Dear John” and “Letters to Juliet” — although more recently, “Red Riding Hood,” was something of a misfire, but it shouldn’t tarnish Seyfried so much, as the film wasn’t really sold on her name. She’s got Andrew Niccol‘s sci-fi actioner “Now” coming up, along with the thriller “Gone,” but it’s not all roses; Seyfried’s just revealed that she lost out on not one, but two mega-budgeted projects from the same director.
The actress was initially announced as playing the lead role of Baby Doll in Zack Snyder‘s imminent masturbatory fantasy “Sucker Punch,” which opens on Friday. However, she was swiftly replaced by Emily Browning, and Seyfried confirms that, while she was dying to do the Snyder project, it was a clash with the HBO series “Big Love,” which she appeared on for the first four seasons (and which aired its final episode last night), that put paid to her involvement.
Seyfried told Adelaide Now (via Bleeding Cool), that “I really wanted Emily Browning‘s role in ‘Sucker Punch.’ I’d originally got that role and everything was in gear, but then I got the call from ‘Big Love’ saying ‘we need you this season, you can’t do it. The director, Zack Snyder, fought for me, and I even called the head of HBO because I thought I wasn’t being used in ‘Big Love’ in a way that was worth me losing out on ‘Sucker Punch.’ At the time it didn’t seem like there was anything better. ‘Big Love’ wouldn’t let me go so I cried a lot.”
But any hope that Snyder would toss her a bone in the future as compensation seems to have come to naught; Seyfried also reveals that “I auditioned for a role in the new ‘Superman’ and didn’t get it.” Whether this was for the unnamed role — thought to be Kryptonian villainess Ursa — that Alice Eve, Diane Kruger and Rosamund Pike were all up for is unclear, but the fact that Seyfried says she didn’t get it suggests that a decision on the casting should be expected any day now. We’ll find out on Friday if missing out on “Sucker Punch” was a curse, or a blessing…
