Key Points
Geena Davis recalls auditioning for the 1985 movie Fletch.
The Beetlejuice actress said she’d hoped for the lead female role but was told she wasn’t attractive enough.
Still, filmmakers thought she was funny, which landed her a smaller role in the Chevy Chase comedy.
Geena Davis recalls being told that she wasn’t leading lady material because she wasn’t pretty enough. Really.
It happened when she tried out for a part in the 1985 Chevy Chase comedy Fletch, which costarred Tim Matheson, Joe Don Baker, M. Emmet Walsh, and, as leading lady Gail Stanwyk, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson.
“I originally auditioned for the lead female character. I’m pretty sure they said, ‘You’re not attractive enough to play that part,'” Davis told Dax Shepard on Monday’s episode of his Armchair Expert podcast.
Davis added that she was “wearing my hair all curly and weird.”
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Still, the Fletch filmmakers were impressed with the actress whose credits included the movie Tootsie and episodes of TV shows such as Family Ties, Knight Rider, and a short-lived sitcom in which she starred called Sara.
“‘We think you’re so funny,'” they told Davis. “‘We want you in the movie.'”
Richard Libertini, Chevy Chase, and Geena Davis star in ‘Fletch’
Credit: Universal
Davis ended up taking on a “really small” part. But it was fun.
“So they said, ‘Oh, but there’s this part of the morgue chief, whose name is Larry, but we’ll change it to a female for you,'” Davis recalled. “And I said, ‘But I still want to be Larry.'”
In fact, Shepard, who’s a big fan of the film, said “it made it very memorable that you were Larry.”
Shepard asked if Chase had been grouchy — he had a reputation of being so in the ’80s — while making the comedy hit about an investigative reporter working undercover to expose a drug ring.
“No, he wasn’t. Not at all,” Davis said. “He might have really enjoyed that movie or something because he seemed fun and funny and chill and great. He seemed great.”
Davis — who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1988’s The Accidental Tourist — went on to play leading roles in movies such as The Fly in 1986 and A League of Their Own in 1992. That same year, she was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in 1991’s Thelma & Louise.
Off screen, she’s the founder of the Geena Davis Institute, a nonprofit championing equitable representation in media.
Hear her full conversation with Shepard above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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