Trivia / Ginger Snaps

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Mimi Rogers agreed to play Pamela because she liked the chance to play all the black humour in the script.
• Banned in China: It was banned in the UK for a while, as they saw it as "promoting teenage violence".
• Dawson Casting:
  • Brigitte, age 15, is played by Emily Perkins, who was 22 when principal photography for the first film took place. Katharine Isabelle, who plays her big sis Ginger, is four years younger than Perkins. What's really weird is that the characters actually look their age, right down to Brigitte appearing younger than Ginger.
  • Ghost in the second film. Tatiana Maslany was 19 at the time of filming, but Ghost is 13.
• Deleted Scene: There were nearly 25 minutes' worth cut from the final film, which included;
  • More scenes between Brigitte and Sam.
  • The growing animosity between Ginger and Mr. Wayne, the school's guidance counselor, before she kills him.
  • Pamela's Heroic BSoD after finding Trina's body.
  • Jason confronting Ginger at the Halloween Party.
  • Pamela telling the cops that arrived to the party that SHE killed Trina, buying Brigitte and Ginger some time to get away.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Katharine Isabelle endured seven hours in the makeup chair to fit Ginger's werewolf prosthetics (and an additional two to remove them). She also wore contacts that hindered her vision, and false teeth that meant she couldn't speak. The full face prosthetic also gave her a perpetual runny nose.
• Reality Subtext: There are a lot of coincidences surrounding the actresses Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. They were born in the same hospital, attended the same schools, were represented by the same talent agency and auditioned on the same day.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Hilariously enough, Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins would again play sisters in Another Cinderella Story in 2008, a far more lighthearted film than the Ginger Snaps series.
  • Due to Isabelle and Perkins both being quite prolific in the horror genre, their careers have overlapped at various other times, too. They both appeared in Season 5 of The X-Files, though in different episodes, and both had recurring guest roles on Supernatural, though again they never appeared together. They've also both starred in screen adaptations of Stephen King novels: Perkins is well-remembered as the young Beverly in the It miniseries from 1990, while Isabelle had a more minor role as Tina in the 2002 remake of Carrie.
• Troubled Production: The producers missed a deadline to apply for funding from Telefilm Canada, forcing them to wait another year while they collected private funding, in the process losing their original distributor. Then, once the film started entering pre-production, the Columbine High School massacre happened. Even across the border in Canada, Columbine had a chilling effect on teen horror films like this one, especially given a) a copycat shooting at W. R. Myers High School in Alberta, and b) the fact that its protagonists were goths, a subculture that came under heavy scrutiny and suspicion after the shooting. Casting directors in Toronto refused to work on the film, forcing the producers to instead hold auditions in Vancouver (where they ultimately found Isabelle and Perkins), and newspapers and Moral Guardians criticized Telefilm Canada for funding it, forcing their director of operations Bill House to issue a statement defending the film. This article by Frederick Blichert for Vice goes into more detail.
• Uncredited Role: Lucy Lawless provides the voice on the school's PA system.
• What Could Have Been: In 2021, John Fawcett revealed that Scarlett Johansson was offered the role of Brigitte, but her mother refused to let her do the film, after she'd read about the boycott by Canadian casting directors.

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