Trivia / Heathers

The Movie

• Acting in the Dark: Shannen Doherty believed she was making a Teen Drama rather than a dark comedy. Word of God says that ended up working in her favor for the performance. In fact, when she first saw it, she ran out in tears wailing "no one told me it was a comedy!"
• Baby Name Trend Killer: "Heather" saw a decline in popularity thanks to the film having a clique of mean girls all named "Heather". Soon after, "Heather" became seen as an "Alpha Bitch" name.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget; $3 million; Gross: $1.1 million
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Kim Walker put in a very good audition for Veronica, and the only thing that stopped her from getting the role was because the director felt that casting her alongside her real-life boyfriend (at the time) Christian Slater would ruin her performance. So she ended up as Heather Chandler instead.
  • Shannen Doherty auditioned for Veronica, but Winona Ryder had already been cast. Keen to have her in the film, they offered her Heather Chandler. Shannen instead preferred to play Heather Duke. Most fans agree she did an excellent job.
• Children Voicing Children: Winona Ryder had her sixteenth birthday on set, complete with cake, and Shannen Doherty was 17 when the film was released. Christian Slater just about gets by, being nineteen at the time.
• Completely Different Title: The film was released as Lethal Attraction in Europe.
  • In most Spanish speaking countries, it was renamed to Escuela de Jóvenes Asesinos which means School of Young Killers.
  • France: Fatal Games
  • Greece: Deadly Passion
  • Israel: The Class Queen
  • Italy: Splinters of Madness
  • Sweden: Witches, Homework and Deadly Lessons
• Contractual Purity: Winona Ryder was still known for family-friendly roles at the time, and her agent begged her not to star in the film, fearing her career would be over. The same week Winona received the script, a schoolmate of hers committed suicide, which inspired her to do the film in spite of potential career damage.
• Dawson Casting:
  • The majority of the students were played by actors in their early twenties. According to Word of God on the DVD Commentary, having high school extras in their late 30s was a Running Gag for New World Pictures.
  • Lisanne Falk, who played Heather McNamara was a strange example. She was 23 when she auditioned but lied to say that she was 18-19. So the filmmakers believed they had cast an actual teenage actress. They didn't find out until the wrap party when she mentioned living with her boyfriend nearby — and asked why her mother was okay with such an arrangement for her '19-year-old' daughter.
  • Most of the extras are in their late 30s (look close).
• Doing It for the Art: Winona Ryder's agent did not want her to take the role, fearing the dark subject matter would ruin her career. Legend says that the agent got down on her knees and begged (Winona later confirmed this).
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Sort of. Winona Ryder still resembled her character in Beetlejuice, and was nearly denied an audition for not looking pretty enough. So she went to a Macy's department store to be given a makeover and eventually won the part of Veronica.
  • In a straighter example, Shannen Doherty was required to dye her hair to match the other Heathers. She refused to go blonde, so they compromised by having her dye her hair red instead.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The actors playing the teens got into character by sending each other notes in between takes, as high schoolers would. Patrick Labyorteaux (Ram) recalls sending inappropriate notes to the girls playing the Heathers — who sent something back "ten times grosser".
  • Christian Slater isolated himself from the rest of the cast, to better get into JD's frame of mind as an outsider.
• Executive Veto:
  • The original ending had Veronica take J.D.'s bomb and blow up herself and everyone in school, followed by a surreal sequence where everyone who died is shown in the afterlife at a prom, where everyone — regardless of what clique they were in when they were living if they were in a clique at all — gets along. This was regarded as "too dark" by executives and it was changed to one where Veronica rejects J.D.'s ideals and J.D. kills himself with the bomb..
  • Executives also changed Heather's posthumous underlined copy of The Catcher in the Rye to Moby-Dick, due to the notorious real-life killers associated with Catcher. (And due to Salinger's refusal to relinquish the rights). The word "Eskimo" does not appear in Moby Dick for Heather to have underlined (though "Esqimaux" appears^note it can be pronounced the same, however), whereas Catcher has the following section about the Natural History Museum:
    The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.
  • The "Snappy Snack Shack" was supposed to be a 7-11 but the execs at the chain didn't want to be associated with the film.
• Filmed Stage Production: A live capture of the West End production was released on The Roku Channel in 2022.
• Genre-Killer: The film dented the teen comedy genre that was popularized by the work of John Hughes — by virtue of being such a dark Deconstruction that it made those films look passe. It wasn't until Clueless pulled a Reconstruction in the 90s that the genre experienced a revival.
• Hostility on the Set: As per the course with Shannen Doherty, director Michael Lehmann called her "a bit of a handful" on set — and she refused to say some of the more explicit lines. Her Stage Mom gave them a bit of grief as well, reminding them that Shannen was the star of the series Our House. Lisanne Falk has said that Shannen was "so bitchy", and Christian Slater said something similar.
• Life Imitates Art: As in the movie, in 2006-2008, a lot of teenagers in Bridgend, Wales decided to commit suicide on Bebo for no reason other than the fact that everyone else was doing it.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Shannen Doherty feels that this, rather than Beverly Hills, 90210 or Charmed (1998) is what she's proudest of.
  "Most people still come up to me about 90210 or Charmed. So when people do stop me about Heathers, I think I give them extra time because I’m so proud of the movie."
• No Budget: It was an extremely low-budget affair, being made for just $3 million. Producer Denise Di Novi actually had to pay for an ad in the Los Angeles Times out of her own pocket because New World Films was going bankrupt at the time.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: The normally brunette Shannen Doherty is red-haired as Heather Duke. Producers originally wanted her to be blonde, so that all three Heathers could match (Kimberly Walker and Lisanne Falk were already blonde). Shannen refused, and going redhead was a compromise to differentiate her character from Veronica.
• Romance on the Set: Christian Slater and Kim Walker were dating at the time. He also briefly went out with Winona Ryder, which she said lasted only a week.
• Star-Making Role: Partially for Winona Ryder (along with Beetlejuice), and fully for Christian Slater.
• Stillborn Franchise: Writer Daniel Waters claims he had an idea for a Denser and Wackier sequel where Veronica would end up working for an evil senator also called Heather — played by Meryl Streep. The film would end with Veronica assassinating the president and getting away with it. Winona Ryder apparently loved the idea, but it never got made. Another suggested idea for the sequel would have JD being revealed to have been a CIA agent — and the CIA blackmailing Veronica into assassinating the president.
• Throw It In!: There's a moment where Heather Duke shows Veronica the petition, and Veronica puts her hand in her hair and looks at Heather as she walks away. Heather was supposed to say "fuck me gently with a chainsaw", but Shannen Doherty refused to say it.
• Vindicated by Cable: The film, while not a box office success, found a lot of its fandom with repeated airings on WGN and TBS.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The leads were almost played by Jennifer Connelly and Brad Pitt. Connelly turned down the role to audition for Say Anything... (which she lost out to Ione Skye) and Pitt was turned down for seeming "too nice". Heather Graham was also considered for Heather Chandler until her mother vetoed the script due to the dark subject matter (she's since become estranged from her parents over their disapproval of some of her roles). Drew Barrymore auditioned too.
  • Jason Bateman, Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp, and Judd Nelson were considered for J.D.
  • Daniel Waters originally wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct and tried sending him the script multiple times, citing that "He's the only one that can get away with a 3-hour movie." It's unlikely Kubrick ever saw the script and, if he did, he never responded to Waters about directing the film. Additionally, the final film would clock in at only an hour and 43 minutes, just over half of the planned runtime.
  • A script for a TV version was pitched to the then-fledgling Fox Network. They had to decide between a TV adaptation of Heathers and some teen show called "Beverly Hills High" (though you might recognize it by its more popular name: Beverly Hills, 90210). Shannen Doherty of course starred in both.
  • An early draft of the script had a scene where Veronica would try to test the blanks out on her cat, but JD would stop her by saying "they don't work on small animals".
  • An alternate ending had Veronica getting stabbed by Martha Dumptruck, who would scream "fuck you, Heather!" — and Veronica's last words would be "My name's not Heather!"
  • Winona Ryder used to talk about a possible sequel to the film where a now-adult Veronica is a White House staffer being blackmailed about her past by the First Lady (named, of course, Heather), and accidentally causing her death. J.D. was apparently supposed to return as "an Obi-Wan figure", and Ryder even attempted to pitch the First Lady role to Meryl Streep. Dan Waters has gone on record saying there aren't any serious plans for this, so it might be a joke.
  • There were also plans for a TV series in 2010, that would focus on the daughters of Veronica and the other two still living Heathers. It never came to fruition and only the script for its pilot can be found https://thescriptsavant.com/TV/Heathers_1x01_-_Whats_My_Damage.pdf.
• Written-In Infirmity: Lance Fenton had a cast on his leg, which appears in the movie as a brace on his knee while he runs through the woods attempting to escape from J.D. It works, as it allows J.D.—a heavy smoker against an athlete—to gain the upper hand.

The Musical

• Cut Song:
  • A reprise of "Fight for Me" and many from the Los Angeles production.
  • An early reprise of "Candy Store" that had the exact same music, but the only lyrics were "Great pate, Mom."
  • "Blue" in the London production, which is replaced with "You're Welcome".
• The Other Darrin:
  • Kristolyn Lloyd was the original Heather Duke in LA, then got replaced by Alice Lee for most of the off-Broadway run. When Alice left to do 'Rising Star as a contestant, Kristolyn returned to close the off-Broadway run.
  • Charissa Hogeland, when not "New Wave Girl" was the understudy for both "Heather Chandler" and "Veronica Sawyer." When Jessica Keenan Wynn had laryngitis, Charissa took over for her (as seen in this "Hasty Pudding Gala" clip alongside Alice and Elle and these media appearances as well).
    • When Barrett Wilbert Weed left the off-Broadway production, Charissa was chosen to replace her. She was the Veronica who closed the run off-Broadway.
  • Jeremy Jordan played J.D. for a couple of shows back in 2010 at a pub in Manhattan.
• Playing Against Type: At least two of J.D.'s actors so far have indulged in this. Ryan McCartan is mainly known for playing a Lovable Jock on Liv and Maddie, while Thomas Sanders is known for his sweet, charming Nice Guy personality in all his works.
• Race Lift: After the COVID-19 pandemic allowed for a 2021 return to West End, the normally Caucasian Heather McNamara was played by the Asian Frances Mayli McCann.

The Television Series

• Development Hell: Though the series had all the episodes of its first season completed and writers were already working on a season two, the series' premiere date was delayed out of respect for the Parkland shooting. While July 2018 was considered for its return, the Santa Fe shooting occurred and the series was scrapped entirely due to no longer feeling comfortable airing the show with their youth-centered brand, and it wasn't until October of that year that season one ended up airing...only to be affected by yet another mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, causing two episodes to be scrapped and the season finale to be edited.
• Distanced from Current Events: Following the massacre in Parkland, Florida, Paramount opted to delay the release of the show out of fears that it would be seen as insensitive. After the Santa Fe shooting, the series was scrapped entirely, only for the already-produced first season to eventually air. Two episodes were cut in the wake of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting during the show's run (which had already had violence edited out due to the aforementioned shootings), with the season finale edited down.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Openly gay actor Brendan Scannell plays the genderqueer Heather Duke. Melanie Field revealed that she is Queer in 2022 and portrays the openly Queer Heather Chandler.

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