Cailee Spaeny almost went under the sea for auteur Sofia Coppola.
Before Spaeny led the next installment in the “Alien” franchise, the actress auditioned for Coppola’s scrapped “The Little Mermaid.” She went on to lead Coppola’s 2023 film “Priscilla” as Priscilla Presley.
“My first-ever callback was through Sofia. It was for [Coppola’s] ‘The Little Mermaid,’ [which] ended up not getting made,” Spaeny told Empire. “I sent this weird self-tape, playing a mermaid with no dialogue. It was very strange and avant-garde.”
Spaeny went on to also try out for Coppola’s “The Beguiled,” that was released in 2017.
“That didn’t end up working out. I was crushed,” she said, “because Sofia is the director that I zeroed in on as a young teenage girl, especially living in the Bible Belt. There’s something so freeing [in her work] and something that wasn’t really talked about for young women where I grew up. She took young girls seriously. It really spoke to me on a personal level.”
Spaeny especially felt understood by Coppola’s signature depictions of young women struggling to be free from social labels. In fact, Spaeny first wanted to star in a “Hannah Montana”-esque show before realizing she was being typecast even as a rising teen star.
“Early on all I wanted to do was be on some sort of teen show, like Miley Cyrus. And I would go to auditions and they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re too dark,’” she said. “I couldn’t do the big, funny, sitcom-y beats because I just made it too moody and angsty. I’d like to think I’m also light-hearted and don’t take things too seriously. But in music and film, I just gravitate towards whatever is the most dramatic or dark.”
Of course, for Coppola’s shelved take on “The Little Mermaid,” that darkness would have come in handy. Coppola was attached to a Universal Pictures and Working Title version of the twisted Disney story in 2014.
“It wasn’t the Disney version, it was actually the original fairy tale, which is much darker,” Coppola said. “I thought it would be fun to do a fairy tale, I’ve always loved fairy tales, so I was curious about doing that.”
She added, “It became too big of a scale. I wanted to shoot it really underwater, which would have been a nightmare. But underwater photography is so beautiful. We even did some tests. It was not very realistic, that approach. But it was interesting to think about.”
Coppola exited the project in 2015. After her departure, Chloe Grace Moretz was cast in the lead role. The film was never made.
