It hasn’t been the easiest week for Sydney Sweeney (or month, or year, but that’s another story). Apart from the actress drawing mixed reviews for her performance on Euphoria Season 3 and receiving backlash for her starring role in Netflix’s upcoming Gundam movie, Sweeney is making headlines once again — except this time, it’s for a movie she isn’t even in.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 just made its world premiere, and Sweeney, who was meant to play herself, was nowhere to be seen. As reported by Entertainment Weekly, Sweeney was supposed to have appeared early on in the movie, sitting for a celebrity dressing led by Emily Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton. The scene was just three minutes long, but reportedly did not fit structurally with the rest of the sequence, and was thus axed.
However, Sweeney wasn’t the only actor to be excluded from the final cut of the movie. Filipino-American actor Conrad Ricamora was initially cast as the roommate of Anne Hathaway’s Andy, but his character “didn’t survive test screenings,” according to Variety.
Anna Wintour also shot a “gag take” that was meant to be included as a bonus feature when the film becomes available on streaming. Unfortunately, Vogue’s former editor-in-chief messed up her cue, and director David Frankel couldn’t ask her to do a take two.
Actors getting cut from movies they’ve already filmed isn’t new, and even the most recognizable faces in Hollywood have experienced the cutting room floor. In light of all the cuts made inThe Devil Wears Prada 2, we’re looking back on some of the times when high-profile actors faced the chop.
Manny Jacinto in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’
Despite spending months preparing for his role as Lt. Billy “Fritz” Avalone in Top Gun: Maverick, most of Manny Jacinto’s time was cut from the movie. All his speaking lines didn’t make it into the final cut, and the Filipino-Canadian actor is mainly relegated to the background in a few, quick scenes.
In response to the cut (and the resulting outcry from his fanbase), Jacinto told GQ that the edit “wasn’t shocking” to him. “It kind of fuels you,” he said, “because at the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise. It’s up to us — Asian-Americans, people of color — to be that [for ourselves].”
Simone Ashley in ‘F1’
Although the Bridgerton actress initially joined the F1 cast in a supporting role, she was eventually reduced to a very short cameo in the Oscar-nominated movie.
“It happens on every film,” F1 director Joseph Kosinski told PEOPLE when asked about the cut, “where you have to shoot more than you can use. There were two or three storylines that ultimately didn’t make it into the final cut.”
For her part, Ashley continued to be supportive of the film’s cast and crew despite her role changing. “I’m grateful to be in that movie,” she told ELLE. “I got to experience many Grands Prix. I don’t think I’ll ever do anything like that again.”
Shailene Woodley in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’
In another universe, we could have had Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson (but it’s okay, because we got Zendaya). Woodley was meant to appear briefly in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as the new love interest for Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker, but her scenes were pushed to the third instalment in the franchise. But, as we all know, that movie never came to pass.
“Of course I’m bummed,” Woodley told Entertainment Weekly. “But I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a specific reason.”
Paul Rudd in ‘Bridesmaids’
Paul Rudd was meant to play a blind-date-gone-wrong in the Oscar-nominated comedy, but his one scene — which involved a decapitated finger, a disastrous day at the ice-skating rink, and expletives thrown at small children — was ultimately cut to trim the film’s initial two-hour-and-a-half runtime.
“There is always that terrible moment when you have to kill your babies,” director Paul Feig told Sirius XM. “We did so many takes of it… It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever been a witness to.”
Harrison Ford in ‘E.T.’
A little-known fact about Harrison Ford’s involvement with Steven Spielberg’s classic, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, is that the actor was dating the movie’s screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, during production. This, plus the fact that he was already friends with Spielberg at the time of shooting, meant that Ford was on set quite a bit, and the director eventually convinced him to play the school principal.
Although Ford’s face is never seen in the cameo — according to lead actor Henry Thomas, only “the back of his chair and his hands” are ever in the shot — Spielberg ultimately decided to cut the scene.
