American Pie star Shannon Elizabeth had her breakout role in the beloved 1999 teen comedy — but before packing on the laughs, she recently revealed she was “really scared” during the audition process.
“The audition process for American Pie was difficult,” Elizabeth, who played the film’s foreign exchange student Nadia, explained to Fox News in an interview published on Sunday, April 12. “I was scared. I was really scared.”
Elizabeth revealed that her audition required her to do the big scene where the main character, Jim, does a striptease dance to a Barenaked Ladies song on a video call, but with the roles reversed. “In the audition, it was the opposite of what you saw in the movie,” she said. “I had to dance for Jason instead of him dancing for me.”
Even though the scene in the film ultimately put the onus on Jason Biggs, the movie’s star, to do the striptease, the audition marked the beginning of a challenging role for Elizabeth, despite the fact that it was her big breakout part.
“I’m not somebody [who’s] super comfortable in my own skin, to be honest,” she told the outlet. “But, you just overcome that. When you have to turn it on, you have to work, because I do love working. I do love acting. So you just let everything else go.”
She went on to have roles in many iconic comedies, including Love Actually and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. But aside from her role in the first two and fourth American Pie films, most people probably know her from her part as Buffy Gilmore in the 2000 comedy classic Scary Movie. At this point, her death scene in that film is iconic, and heavily quoted to boot.
Elizabeth has since pivoted from acting to conservation work and no longer performs full time — but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t return for another walk in the American Pie universe. “I would love to see a film where it’s all about Nadia back in her home country and what she does there, and following her around, seeing her day-to-day life now,” the former actress said of her hopes for another film. “I think that would be so much fun.”
The last American Pie film, American Reunion, came out in 2012, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if Universal decides to pursue a legacy sequel at some point in the near future. In 2022, The Hollywood Reporter said a new American Pie movie was in the works from writer Sujata Day that would apparently offer “a fresh take,” but we haven’t heard anything concrete since, so Elizabeth might just have to keep waiting.
Photo by Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
