Winona Ryder’s iconic performance in 1989’s “Heathers” almost never came to be.
In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, the Generation X actor opened up about the casting process, and how she was nearly passed up for one of her most beloved roles in the dark comedy classic.
“I went in and I met, and they didn’t think I was pretty enough,” Ryder, who played Veronica Sawyer in the film, recalled. “I was, sort of, the weird girl from 'Beetlejuice.' It was very fair because on-screen, I had only played very weird characters.”
The actress, who starred just months earlier in “Beetlejuice,” said she went to a Macy’s across the street for a makeover.
“I went back and I was like, ‘You don’t have to pay me, I just want to say these words,’” Ryder said, sharing that she was, indeed, not paid very much.
Ryder, who praised "Heathers" writer Daniel Waters, said she still has love for the film today, not just because of its impact on her career.
“It was sort of revolutionary . . . groundbreaking, in a way,” Ryder said of the film, which subverted the typical teenaged tropes seen in movies before it. “To this day, if it comes on TV, I have to sit through it. It feels wrong to change the channel.”
Ryder also told Harper’s Baazar about the protests she and Christian Slater encountered on their press tour for the film, which became a cult classic.
Ryder, whose 2002 conviction for shoplifting put hurdles in front of her career, has spent nearly 10 years playing Joyce Byers in Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” and is set to reprise her role in the fifth season of the show next year.
