Trivia / Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

• Actor-Shared Background: Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino were also unpopular bullied geeks in high school.
• Approval of God: In a way; the actual inventor of Post-Its Art Fry loves the movie and dismissed Mira Sorvino's attempt at an "apology". In fact, he also claimed that the 'glue formula' spoken by Michele in a scene was written by himself once the studio contacted 3M for some input.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Janeane Garofalo read for Romy, and the producers immediately felt she was perfect for Heather Mooney instead.
• Dawson Casting: Justified in the high school scenes because most of the movie takes place when the characters are 28. The extras were even in that age range to make the regular cast not stand out.
• Deleted Role: Will Ferrell had a small role that wound up not appearing.
• Executive Meddling: As recalled by an oral history, after disastrous test screenings, there was a lot of cuts and shuffling around, making director David Mirkin consider taking his name off the movie. A more positive note was that the studio suggested the dream sequence, and Robin Schiff initially hated the idea before she realized she could go nuts in that Imagine Spot (ironically making the same executives dissatisfied with the results!).
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Writer Robin Schiff pitched the idea in 1992 (based on two characters of a play that she wrote for the troupe she and Lisa Kudrow were in), and spent the next five years fine-tuning the script. She was even fired for a year, during which some writers tried to take a stab at it, only for a new head at Touchstone Pictures to bring her back, saying Romy and Michele and Grosse Pointe Blank were the only movies he was keeping.
• Fake American: The first case of these for the British Alan Cumming, who plays Sandy Frink.
• Invisible Advertising: The above mentioned extra month of reworking wound up eating time and money that would used for promotion.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • The two Dumb Blondes are played by Harvard graduate Mira Sorvino and Vassar graduate Lisa Kudrow.
  • Julia Campbell, who played an Alpha Bitch who puts magnets on Michele's back brace, did wear one of those in high school to fix a nasty case of scoliosis.
• Production Posse: Lisa Kudrow had previously appeared in two previous projects from producer Barry Kemp: the finale of Newhart (as one of Larry, Darryl and Darryl's wives), and several episodes of Coach.
• Throw It In!: The director allowed basically every scene to have a second take where the actors improvised. Some of the ones that made it in are Romy hitting Michele with her ponytail, Michele saying “Oh my God, are my lips that big?”, Heather having soda running down her dress, and the whole dance routine.
• The Other Darrin: Both leads in the prequel, of course. Katherine Heigl in particular does a spot on version of Lisa Kudrow's accent from the original movie (although Kudrow played Michele and Heigl plays Romy...).
• What Could Have Been: The play that the Romy and Michele characters originated in, Ladies' Room, was optioned by Aaron Spelling into a 1989 pilot for ABC, Just Temporary, which had both Kudrow and the original Romy, Christie Mellor, reprising their roles as temps working for a talk radio host. The pilot wasn't very good and didn't get picked up.
  • Before going with the Class Reunion idea, Robin Schiff was considering other potential plots, including the duo going to college or Japan.
  • Amy Heckerling was the first candidate for director, but she turned it down; Barry Kemp ultimately brought in David Mirkin from their time together on Newhart.
  • Since Touchstone didn't want the original Romy, Christie Mellor, there were some other candidates, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who the studio didn't want because they wanted a "movie star") and Toni Collette (who nearly got the part, but struggled with the Valley Girl accent and ultimately passed; she wound up co-starring with Kudrow in Clockwatchers).
  • While David Mirkin managed to put in most of the alternative rock songs he suggested, R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" wound up replaced by The Go-Go's at the writer's behest.