Drew Barrymore and “Whip It ”costar Juliette Lewis reflect on film roles they lost to each other: ‘Their mistake!’

Drew Barrymore in Cape Fear? Juliette Lewis in Riding in Cars With Boys? It could’ve happened!

The actresses, who shared the screen in Barrymore’s 2009 directorial debut Whip It, reflected on the movie roles that they lost to one another over the years on Thursday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.

The conversation arose during the talk show’s Behind the Scenes segment, which sees Barrymore ask guests to share fond memories from selected entries in their filmography. When Barrymore brought up Lewis’ performance in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, the host noted that she’d similarly read the script and was amazed by how Lewis’ performance anchored the film.

Turning to the audience, Lewis explained, “We came up in the same time, so I would see scripts or lose parts to Drew. Remember Boys [on the Side]? Yes! I lost to Drew Barrymore.”

Lewis’ recollection of her audition, however, suggests that the film was actually Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars With Boys, not Boys on the Side. Regardless, Barrymore was still shocked by the news before revealing she, too, had lost a role to Lewis.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “Okay, I wasn’t gonna bring it up, but I auditioned for Cape Fear. And it was on a Sunday morning with the casting director’s assistant, which means you have no chance.”

It didn’t go over well. “I had to do the scene where he sticks the finger in your mouth and I had to put my own finger in my mouth,” Barrymore explained, referring to a moment in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 horror film where Robert De Niro’s character sticks his thumb into a young Lewis’ mouth. “I was doing his part and my part and I was like, ‘This isn’t gonna go well.’ And I knew it.”

Lewis was later nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Danielle Bowden, the teen daughter of defense attorney Samuel Bowden (Nick Nolte), in the film.

Barrymore was also amazed to learn that Lewis had also auditioned for Riding in Cars With Boys at Marshall’s house. “Their mistake!” the host said of not hiring Lewis for the job. The fellow actress brushed off the compliment, replying, “Oh, please.”

She did acknowledge, however, that she was sad at the time to have not landed the role “because that was a really juicy part.”

The 2001 film, which was based on Beverly Donofrio’s autobiography of the same name, tells her story as a young mother navigating a complicated marriage and relationship to her son. Alongside Barrymore, the film starred Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Facinelli, and Lorraine Bracco.

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Barrymore also recalled auditioning for the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, which starred Lewis as one half of a serial killer couple with Woody Harrelson.

“I went up for this too and read that script… but I was so glad when it was you because I knew that I wasn’t right for it,” Barrymore said. “You have an energy about you. You have that sparkle. You have that thing. You were the right person to play this.”

The host explained that the film, which was based on an original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, was developed at a time when it was easy to get access to the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood writer’s work. “He wasn’t coveted about them; everyone could read them,” she said of Tarantino’s process. “And he would write them in the Denny’s in West Hollywood. He wrote this one and it was around for a few years.”

Lewis described the Oliver Stone-directed film as a “really incredible” experience, noting that it allowed her the space to dabble in some “really primal energies” that women weren’t typically allowed to express onscreen.

“Especially at that time — what was it, ’94, ’95? — you didn’t have women doing a lot of fight sequences,” she said. “You [Barrymore] did it later with Charlie’s Angels where you wanted really exciting action sequences. We didn’t have it back then.”

She added, “It was very volatile, the nature of the character, and Oliver, even though he’s a tough director, he never said no to a single idea I came up with. He really spoiled me, because he allowed me to try all these different ideas. A lot of things that people remember of Mallory Knox is because I was allowed to contribute in that way.”

The Drew Barrymore Show airs weekdays on CBS.

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