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NEED TO KNOW
- Brittany Snow appeared as Amber Von Tussle in 2007’s adaptation of Hairspray
- The actress almost lost her role after bombing the first audition
- She recalled in a recent interview how a psychic helped her get a second audition
Hairspray fans almost missed out on watching Brittany Snow play Amber Von Tussle in the 2007 musical.
According to Snow, her audition to play the bratty daughter of Velma Von Tussle, portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, didn’t go as planned, but she was determined to fight for the role after remembering what a psychic once told her.
During a sit-down with Variety, published on Monday, Aug. 25, the actress recalled messing up her first audition for the film adaptation of the 2002 Broadway musical of the same name, which was itself based on John Waters’ 1988 movie starring Ricki Lake.
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“I bombed that audition. I did terribly. Adam Shankman, the director of Hairspray, he called me and he was like, ‘Well, that wasn’t great,'” she reflected. “I got really in my head. I got really nervous and my voice cracked.”
Although she did “pretty well at the dancing,” which was crucial to Amber’s role as the lead female dancer on The Corny Collins Show, Snow admitted it was not enough to compensate for her “awful” singing audition.
“[Shankman] said to me, ‘You know, what’s really funny? We just got Michelle Pfeiffer connected to play Velma Von Tussle. And so it would have been really iconic if you guys were both in it,” Snow remembered.
That was the lightning bolt that reminded Snow of a previous conversation she had with a psychic.
Two years prior, a psychic told her that she “was going to be in a huge movie with an iconic, beautiful blonde woman playing my mother.”
Following this realization, Snow decided to call Shankman back and plead for a second chance.
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“He will attest to this because it’s such a crazy story,” Snow said. “I said, ‘I went to the psychic. And I know this sounds insane, but the psychic told me that I’m going to play Michelle Pfeiffer’s daughter, basically.’ ”
“And he said, ‘That is the craziest story. You’re so insane that I’m gonna let you audition again,'” she said.
Although Snow believed he might have felt bad for her, she went ahead and auditioned again and “nailed it.”
“That’s how I got the role. So when in doubt, go to a psychic,” she quipped.