Actress Cailee Spaeny, who recently appeared in Fede Àlvarez’s Alien: Romulus, is one of the most talented actresses in the industry. She has previously been part of projects including Pacific Rim Uprising, On the Basis of Sex, Mare of Eastown, The First Lady, and more. The actress has been appreciated for her work, and her portrayal of Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla earned her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival 2023.
The young actress will be seen in the third installment of the Knives Out franchise scheduled for release in 2025. Cailee Spaeny recently revealed that Priscilla wasn’t her first collaboration with the very talented Sofia Coppola but a scrapped version of a movie that the audience eventually saw on screens but under Disney’s banner with Halle Bailey leading the movie.
Cailee Spaeny could have played a mermaid before Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s now-scraped movie
The young actress Cailee Spaeny appeared as Rain Carradine in the recently released Alien: Romulus. In her recent interview with Empire Magazine, she revealed that her first-ever call back was through filmmaker Sofia Coppola, who at one point was working on The Little Mermaid, which eventually got scrapped. Spaeny said,
I sent this weird self-tape, playing a mermaid with no dialogue. It was very strange and avant-garde. Then I auditioned for The Beguiled, and that didn’t end up working out. I was crushed because Sofia is the director that I zeroed in on as a young teenage girl, especially living in the Bible Belt.
According to Deadline, back in 2014, Coppola was working on the live-action version of The Little Mermaid with Universal Pictures, but somehow things didn’t work out after she was asked how her movie would appeal to a 35-year-old man. The filmmaker said,
I just was not in my element. I feel like I was naïve, and then I felt a lot like the character in the story, trying to do something out of my element, and it was a funny parallel of the story for me.
Sofia Coppola’s version of The Little Mermaid was a little darker, as she explained at New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center (via IndieWire) that her live-action version was not the Disney version. She added that it was actually the original fairy tale, which is much darker. She explained later that she wanted to do underwater photography, which did not turn out to be realistic, hence she moved on from the project.
Spaeny praised the filmmaker in her interview, stating that Coppola takes young girls seriously and speaks to them on a personal level. The young actress was finally able to work with Coppola on Priscilla. Halle Bailey played the lead role in 2023’s The Little Mermaid, co-produced by Walt Disney.
Cailee Spaeny talks about Alien: Romulus
In her conversation, the actress was asked about her experience of working with an alien in her recent release Alien: Romulus, to which she said that the creature in the movie is terrifying. The actress mentioned that the minute one takes a look at the creature, the hair on the back of your neck stands up, and despite her looking at it many times, she’d still be terrified every time she was acting against it.
The puppeteers were absolutely brilliant. I mean, they were really puppeteering these creatures. I just don’t think we see that anymore; we turned a corner where everything became green screens and acting like tennis balls. So, it’s so nice to bring it back. I think you can feel it on-screen.
She was asked about following the footsteps of Sigourney Weaver, who has played a very significant role in the Alien franchise. Spaeny mentioned that she loves the actress but tried to do her own thing with the role because she didn’t know how she would have filled in Weaver’s shoes if she started to think about following her legacy.
The publication praised the young actress as they mentioned that she was involved in the shoot, suggesting things, changing things, and making sure everything was perfect. Cailee Spaeny will be seen in Knives Out’s third installment.
Alien: Romulus is playing in cinemas.
Frequently asked questions
What role did Cailee Spaeny almost play in Sofia Coppola’s scrapped Little Mermaid?
Cailee Spaeny told Empire Magazine that her first-ever callback came through Sofia Coppola, who was once developing a live-action The Little Mermaid. Spaeny said she sent “this weird self-tape, playing a mermaid with no dialogue,” calling it “very strange and avant-garde.” The project was eventually scrapped, so she never got to play the mermaid role she had auditioned for at that early stage of her career.
Why did Sofia Coppola’s version of The Little Mermaid never get made?
Coppola was developing the live-action film with Universal Pictures (and Working Title) around 2014. As Deadline reported, things shifted after a development executive in a boardroom asked what would get “the 35-year-old man in the audience,” and Coppola said she “just was not in my element” and felt naive. She has also said the project’s scale and budget grew too big, and that realistic underwater photography proved impractical, so she ultimately walked away.
How was Coppola’s Little Mermaid different from the Halle Bailey Disney film?
The article reports that Coppola’s version would have been much darker, drawing on the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale rather than the familiar Disney story. Speaking at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (via IndieWire), she stressed it “wasn’t the Disney version.” After Coppola’s film collapsed, Disney made its own 2023 live-action The Little Mermaid, produced by Walt Disney Pictures and directed by Rob Marshall, with Halle Bailey playing the lead role of Ariel.
