what's the story of how pj was cast in success?
good question!! adrienne (the shapeshifter protagonist of success) was not originally meant to be played by a shapeshifter!!!
success is about a shapeshifter called adrienne whose circumstances push her to change her appearance/personality over and over until she’s hardly the person she started as, that’s the blurb basically.but originally, adrienne was going to be played by an ensemble cast including maybe five relatively big-name actors. supposedly it was meant to reflect all the fractured and compartmentalized sections of adrienne’s character/personality over the course of the film – which is something PJ has been praised for, since she effectively played a character that was written to be played by like 10 people. PJ doesn’t really think she deserves that praise (and neither do i >_>), but the point is the role was originally not written for a shapeshifter. in the process of making a movie about a shapeshifter it wasn’t considered to use an unknown shapeshifter actor when there was the possibility of using some famous human actors.
PJ originally auditioned to be just one of adrienne’s actors. she never went into the audition intending to be like “hey dicksmiths i’m an actual shapeshifter just let me play her for the whole movie” – that was kind of a pipedream idea, like a fantasy that would never actually happen, that somebody would go “wow your audition was great and you’re a shapeshifter so just have the f#cking movie!!!”but during the casting process, while PJ was initially cast to play one of the more prominent parts of adrienne’s life (just based on her talent), it did come into the casting conversation that she was a shapeshifter herself. there was a lot of back and forth on what to do which as you can guess ended on PJ being offered the role of adrienne in its entirety. with some negotiation, some of the more famous actors stayed on as co-stars and supporting cast, while a couple of them left the project after losing adrienne’s role. there were varying levels of happiness with a mutant’s involvement. despite it being a movie about a mutant.
so there were a lot of people patting themselves on the back about how progressive it was to have a mutant playing a mutant, as if that wasn’t just, something they should have done from the get-go. after success came out and everybody lost their tits about how good it was (because, i have a lot of thoughts on success’ cultural impact and stuff, but it was definitely just a straight up good movie, that is in its canon) the director was praised for her innovative decision and what a smart move it was to have a shapeshifter play a shapeshifter like it was a decision that should be made on the theatrical value and not the…..straight up morals really.
and of course PJ lost her tiny mind and cried a lot when she found out she was playing adrienne entirely because wow!!! why wouldn’t u be overwhelmed and delighted by that. i love my girl
SOOO THAT’S ALL I CAN THINK OF!!! THX FOR THE Q ALWAYS SEND MORE IF U HAVE ANY X