Andrew McCarthy nearly passed on Pretty in Pink—until he realized how broke he was.
McCarthy told The Hollywood Reporter’s It Happened In Hollywood podcast that he didn’t even read the script before he signed on to the 1986 John Hughes-written film.
“I needed a job and I needed the $50,000 they were going to pay me,” said McCarthy, 63 in the interview released on Thursday.
“I read the script on the way out, on the plane,” he said, after which he was less than pleased about the character he’d unwittingly signed up for. He decided he’d find his next payday another day, he explained.
“I called my agent and said, ‘You’ve got to get me out of this movie. This guy’s a jerk,’” McCarthy recalled, after reading a version of the original script which had his rich-guy character Blane cave to peer pressure in the end, and dump his middle-class girlfriend Andie Walsh (played by Molly Ringwald). Ultimately, the ending was rewritten into the classic fans love today after test screenings revealed that fans reacted the same way McCarthy did.
The ending was reshot to create the version released, in which Andie and Blane end up together.
Before the film came together, McCarthy said he thought of it as “a silly, tepid story about a girl who wants to go to a dance and makes a dress.” What’s worse, the movie’s director, Howard Deutch, was not himself keen on casting McCarthy. “Molly apparently turned to John and Howie and said, ‘That’s the guy,’” McCarthy said on the podcast.
McCarthy, who was 22 at the time, was not the “broad-shouldered, square-jawed, quarterback hunk type” that Hughes had originally described in the script, the actor explained—and was therefore not the obvious choice. “John—to his credit, this is very John Hughes—said: ‘That wimp?’” McCarthy recalled. Ringwald insisted, however.
“Molly said: ‘No, he’s not some boring jock. He’s sensitive and soulful and poetic. He’s the guy.’ And John, to his enormous credit, actually listened.”
