James Cameron Shares The Trick He Played To Getting Sigourney Weaver To Sign on To ALIENS
Sigourney Weaver wasn’t initially that interested in reprising her role as Ellen Ripley in James Cameron’s Aliens, which ended up being one of the most awesome and badass sequels ever made. A lot of fans even think the sequel is better than the first one! But, it wouldn’t have worked if Weaver didn’t come back to play Ripley.
It turns out that Cameron had to play a little trick of deception to get the actress to sign on. He started telling people that he was going to rewrite the script for the film with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead, which he had no intention of doing. The filmmaker explained in an interview with GQ:
"I called up Lou Pitt, Arnold [Schwarzenegger]’s agent, and I said, 'Lou, we’re kind of over this. So, we’ve decided that we really like the story and all the Marine Corps characters and the world we’ve created and everything. And really, we’ve thought about it, and we really just don’t need Sigourney. I’ve created all these characters, and my pride of authorship tells me I should go ahead with this, and we’ll just cut her out of it, and we’ll just cut her character out of it. We won’t recast it; I’ll just rewrite it. So, I’m going to start on that tonight."
He went on to say that he knew this news would get to Weaver and her agent, which was the plan all along, and it worked. Not long after Weaver signed on to star in the film:
"Now, did I have any intention of doing that whatsoever? No, not at all. But I happen to know that Lou is at the same agency as Sigourney’s agent, who was in New York. And I knew that the second he hung up with me, he called him and said, 'Sign Sigourney now.' And guess what? The deal was done in 12 hours after that. So, I never wrote a word of that hypothetical story that I said I was going to do, that I had no intention of writing anyway. Anyway, it worked, and Sigourney got her million bucks, and everyone was happy."
I guess you gotta do what you gotta do to get the job done! But, I wonder what would have happened if it didn’t work. Would Cameron have moved forward with the movie? Would Aliens ever have been made?! I’m just glad everything worked out in the end!