Following the 25th anniversary of the first 1999 American Pie movie, Alyson Hannigan made a stunning revelation about her role as the lovable band nerd Michelle Flaherty and how she nearly missed out on the sequels.
During an interview with Vulture, Hannigan added, “The best story from the whole thing was that you know, it was a low-budget movie with all these tiers of negotiations. There was an A-tier and a B-tier. I think I was on the bottom C-tier with Seann [William Scott].”
She continued, “I was like, ‘Okay, fine.’ It was seven days and it was more of a passion project. Then, in the contract, there was a sequel clause. I said, ‘Look, I’m getting paid scale plus 10. I’m not going to sign for a sequel. That doesn’t make sense.’ I sound like I was being really difficult, but I just thought it was silly. So they took that [clause] out, which ended up being really nice for me when I did the sequel. There were a couple smart things I did back then.”
American Pie also starred Chris Klein, Jason Biggs, Eddie Kaye Thomas, and Thomas Ian Nicholas as a group of high school friends who made a pact to lose their virginity before graduation.
Following her breakout role as Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hannigan stated she found herself drawn to the role of Michelle because the character “surprises you at the end.” She added, “I was already playing, like, the perfect person on Buffy, and Michelle was the opposite.”
The 50-year-old actress admitted that she juggled both roles as the movie’s producers “had to clear my schedule for Buffy” but she was “glad it worked out.” She continued recalling, “The second one I worked 11 days because I was still on Buffy. For the third one, I worked weekends and that was brutal because there was a day when I worked all night on American Pie and drove straight to the Buffy set. It was like a 36-hour day or something. Crazy.”
Hannigan reprised her role as the quirky flutist in American Pie 2, American Wedding, and the 2012 reunion film American Reunion.
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