Reese Witherspoon has remembered once having her ego checked by Oscar-nominated director David Fincher.
Appearing on Wednesday’s episode of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s Las Culturistas podcast, the Legally Blonde star, 49, revealed she “was supposed to star in” the director’s 2014 psychological thriller Gone Girl.
That was until, according to Witherspoon, “[Fincher] sat me down — and this is not on David, but David’s like, ‘You’re totally wrong for this part, and I’m not putting you in it.’”
Instead, Rosamund Pike ended up landing the lead role in the movie, based on Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel of the same name. Pike’s performance as Amy — whose sudden disappearance leaves her husband (Ben Affleck) as the prime suspect — earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Witherspoon recalled having “all these conversations with” Flynn, who also wrote the film’s script. “And she was like, ‘No, I’d really like you to do it,’” the Morning Show actor said.
But Fincher disagreed. “He was like, ‘You’re wrong,’” Witherspoon recounted, admitting the moment was “an ego check for me.”
In retrospect, “he was totally right,” she said. “Fincher just killed it, and Rosamund Pike is so diabolical and Ben Affleck is sort of the rube on the other side of it.”
Though she missed out on the lead role, Witherspoon remained involved as a co-producer on the project with Bruna Papandrea.
That same year, she starred in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild, an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s moving and best-selling memoir.
Witherspoon’s portrayal of Strayed earned her a second Best Actress Oscar nomination, placing her in direct competition with Pike. However, they both lost to Julianne Moore, who won for Still Alice.
Released in 2014, Gone Girl also starred Carrie Coon, Tyler Perry, and Emily Ratajkowski. It became a hit with critics and audiences, who lauded it for being “slippery, deceptive and immensely pleasurable.”
“Gone Girl is so full of reversals and so laden with irony that its attempts at a Husbands And Wives-style anatomy of a relationship under strain soon begin to founder,” The Independent’s Geoffrey McNab wrote in a review at the time. “This isn’t an especially insightful film about what makes marriages creak but it is very entertaining and provocative one that full justifies its lengthy running time.”
