Kirsten Dunst Feared She Wouldn’t Be Taken Seriously After Doing ‘Bring It On’
Actor Kirsten Dunst couldn’t have predicted playing a cheerleader in Bring It On would’ve become one of her most iconic roles. At the same time, Dunst was worried the movie’s popularity would’ve had a negative side effect on her career.
Kirsten Dunst was worried about her ‘Bring It On’ success
Dunst was already a well-known actor when she starred in Bring It On. She built herself a nice resume as a child star, having featured in projects like Interview with the Vampire and Jumanji. But when the 2000 sports movie first caught her attention, she was reluctant to take on the project.
“[I was shooting] in Prague, and I remember not turning it down, exactly, but not being super sure about it. I was like, ‘A cheerleading movie?’ It sounded like it could have been just a cheesy teen movie, but what sealed the deal for me was talking to the director, Peyton Reed, on the phone — he was just so smart. I agreed to do it mostly because of Peyton,” Dunst once said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Even after Reed won her over, however, Dunst couldn’t have imagined the movie being the phenomenon it turned into.
“We made the movie for nothing. We were a little Universal movie that no one cared about,” she said in a separate Entertainment Weekly interview.
Dunst asserted that her character Torrance Shipman is still quoted by her friends to this day. Additionally, she and her co-star Gabrielle Union are often asked about returning for a potential sequel after so many years. However, Dunst worried that Bring It On would actually hinder her career in the long run. It was noted that Dunst feared she wouldn’t be taken seriously as an actor after being so heavily tied to the project. Of course, the actor had nothing to worry about. From Spider-Man to Hidden Figures to Civil War, Bring It On wasn’t the career peak she once worried it’d be.
“It’s nice to enjoy these things, but your young self always judges you so hard,” she said when thinking about her past thoughts.
Kirsten Dunst wasn’t the first choice for ‘Bring It On’
James Franco wasn’t the only actor who almost starred in Bring It On. In an interview with The Ringer, Reed went into a little more detail about how much effort was behind recruiting Dunst for Bring It On. It turns out, Dunst did initially turn down the movie, but this was before Reed got on board. So the execs behind Bring It On were looking at another actor to play Torrance.
“So when I first got back to L.A., one of the first things in prep was to meet with Joseph Middleton, our casting director, who had set up a lunch with me and Marley Shelton,” Reed recalled.
Shelton left a strong impression on Reed, and she most likely would’ve gotten the role. But fortunately for Dunst, Shelton found herself picking another similar movie over Bring It On.
“But I remember Joseph Middleton saying, ‘OK, you should know Marley is up for another movie, so she might not be available.’ And then he says, ‘And you should also know it’s another cheerleader movie,’” Reed remembered. “My first reaction was like, ‘Holy s***, there’s another cheerleader movie? What the f***?’ And it turned out it was this thing at the time that was called Sugar & Spice & Semi-automatics. It later became Sugar & Spice, about bank-robbing cheerleaders, which is very different than Bring It On.”
Reed would eventually circle back to Dunst, and their meeting went pretty much exactly how Dunst described it.
“At that point, she was in the Czech Republic doing another movie. But Kirsten and I got on the phone and talked about it, and I answered all her questions and stuff, and she ended up signing on to the movie, which was fantastic, because you knew from a very young age that Kirsten was such a talented and soulful actor—like, she really went deep and would be such a great anchor for this movie. So that was a thrill,” he said.
