Meryl Streep Was Originally Cast as Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott's ALIEN
Here’s an interesting “what if?” casting scenario that almost happened! Meryl Streep was originally cast in the role of Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror film Alien. It’s hard to imagine her in that role because Sigourney Weaver is freakin’ incredible as this character!
Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver actually attended college together at Yale Drama School and they regularly competed for the same acting roles. Streep ended up winning a lot of these roles including Alien… at first.
Ellen Ripley is the heart of Alien and an extremely badass character who is forced to survive a situation where she is pitted against the deadly Xenomorph alien species. In the original script, the character was written in a way so that it could be played by either a male or female.
When they settled on a female character, several actresses auditioned for the role including Helen Mirren, Katharine Ross (The Graduate), Geneviève Bujold (Dead Ringers), and Veronica Cartwright, who read for the part of Ripley but was ultimately cast as her doomed crew-mate Lambert instead.
In the end, the two finalists came down to Streep and Weaver and it was offered to Streep because casting director Mary Goldberg felt Streep was the better fit for the character. So why didn’t it work out? One report says that Scott decided “she was too dainty and frail to play a rugged space miner.”
Another report says that production on the film was set to start shortly after the death of John Cazale, Streep's partner. He passed away from lung cancer in March 1978. It’s said that the producers wanted to give Streep more time to grieve her loss, so they let her go and replaced her with Weaver.
In the end, Weaver was 100% the right choice! While Streep has won a ton of Oscars over the course of her career, I honestly don’t think she would have been able to effectively pull this off, but we’ll never know!
Now, while Streep in the role of Ellen Ripley in Alien is one thing, could you imagine her in the other films in the franchise like James Cameron’s Aliens?! That’s just wild to think about what that would have looked like!
What do you think about Steep almost playing Ripley in the Alien franchise?