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Reese Witherspoon learned a valuable lesson when a director refused to cast her in a movie.
During a recent appearance on Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ “Las Culturistas” podcast, the 49-year-old “Legally Blonde” star shared that although she had optioned the rights to the bestselling novel, “Gone Girl,” with the intention of starring in it, director David Fincher declined to cast her in the 2014 movie.
“David sat me down – and this is not on David – but David’s like, ‘You’re totally wrong for this part, and I’m not putting you in it,'” she explained.
Despite having the full support of the book’s author, Gillian Flynn, who Witherspoon explained kept telling her, “I’d really like you to do it,” she said the director would not change his mind, telling her, “You’re wrong.”
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Witherspoon optioned the rights to “Gone Girl” with the hope of starring in the film. (XNY/Star Max/GC Images)
Eventually, Fincher went on to cast Rosamund Pike in the lead role, alongside Ben Affleck, Carrie Coon, Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris. While Witherspoon says it was a tough pill to swallow, she admitted the director had a point.
“That was, first of all, an ego check for me,” she said. “It was like, ‘No, you’re not right for everything.’ And he was right. He was totally right.”
In terms of why she wasn’t right for the role, Witherspoon said Fincher didn’t give her any reasons, but she thought it could have been because she would have “brought an audience with me that likes me,” and added that she isn’t known to be “sinister or diabolical.”
The project was the first film Witherspoon produced with her production company, Pacific Standard, which has since been rebranded as Hello Sunshine.
The lead role ultimately went to Rosamund Pike. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images for CCMA)
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“Producing also means get out of the way when you’re supposed to,” she shared. “Do your job to promote, continue to pull people together, continue to build creative groups so that the ultimate result is the best work that it could possibly be. So that was a lesson to me.”
Pike went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Amy Dunne in the film.
Despite the fact that “Gone Girl” and the next film she produced, “Wild,” received a combined three Oscar nominations, Witherspoon said it took a while for her to be taken “seriously as a producer.”
“It took me till ‘Big Little Lies,’” she said. “So ‘Big Little Lies’ was like a year later, and Nicole [Kidman] and I produced that together till people started taking me seriously as a producer, because I honestly could not get traction even as a producer, even with those hits, with those three Oscar nominations. Yeah, it was really hard.”
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Witherspoon and Kidman produced “Big Little Lies” together. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for AFI)
Witherspoon went on to find great success as a producer, often starring in the films and television shows she produced, including “Little Fires Everywhere,” “The Morning Show” and “You’re Cordially Invited.”
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