‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Alum and ‘Private Practice’ Star Kate Walsh Didn’t Inspire ‘The Sweetest Thing’
Actor Kate Walsh, or Addison to fans of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, isn’t the inspiration for The Sweetest Thing. A remark she made on the movie’s DVD extras led people to believe her adventures with screenwriter Nancy Pimental inspired it. But that’s not true.
Cameron Diaz and Christina starred in ‘The Sweetest Thing’
A few years after playing the title character in There’s Something About Mary, Cameron Diaz signed on for The Sweetest Thing. The 2002 film follows her character, Christina Walters, as she meets a guy named Peter (Thomas Jane) who could be “the one.” She sets about tracking him down.
Soon she finds herself on a road trip with her best friend Courtney (Christina Applegate) to what they believe is the wedding of Peter’s brother, Roger (Jason Bateman). Finding Christina’s potential soulmate isn’t the only thing she and Courtney are doing. At the time they are on their road trip, they’re trying to encourage their friend Jane (Selma Blair) to start dating again after a breakup.
The Sweetest Thing opened to less than stellar reviews. But in the years since it’s developed cult status. It’s considered by some to be the precursor to women-focused films such as Bridesmaids and Bad Moms.
Kate Walsh made a comment on ‘The Sweetest Thing’ DVD fans took as true
Pimental told Entertainment Weekly in 2018 how it came to be general knowledge that her friendship with Walsh served a the inspiration for The Sweetest Thing.
A camera crew came to her house to film a feature for the DVD. She chose a “very tongue-in-cheek and ironic” video about a day in the life of a bigshot screenwriter. Pimental called all of her “actor friends” over to help, including Walsh.
“Kate had said in this thing that we were best friends and the movie was based on our friendship,” Pimental said, noting they improvised everything.
“It’s so funny how people just said, ‘Oh, well the part that Kate said must be true,’” she added. Now she and Walsh “just laugh about it.”
Women working at the same restaurant inspired the movie
Pimental set the record straight on the true inspiration. Before she wrote the movie she’d been working at a restaurant with a tight-knit group of women.
“We just ran in this pack where we were these waitresses, and there was always these write-ups about us in magazines, because the place was really popular and a lot of Saudi princes would go there,” she said.
Pimental continued, saying they were “owning” their “womanhood.”
“There was this group of girls and we were running around town and partying at these different clubs and just owning our womanhood, I guess,” she said.
And that’s where the inspiration for The Sweetest Thing came in.
“I just thought, ‘God, there’s not an example of this sort of girl posse where we’re more like guys.’ Yeah, we decide if we want to give you a fake number or not kind of thing. There wasn’t this empowerment, I guess, or this example of it,” she said before adding, “That’s really how it started.”
Watch The Sweetest Thing on Hulu with a premium subscription or rent it on Amazon Prime.
