Knock 3 Times to Reveal These Secrets About Now and Then

Christina Ricci EMBARRASSED by Her Performance in Casper

Knock three times on the ceiling if you are still obsessed with Now and Then. 

Nearly three decades ago, one of the most definitive movies about female friendship made its debut in theaters. Yes, we’re obviously talking about Now and Then. Yes, you may be feeling old AF right now. And, yes, you should absolutely stop whatever you are doing and immediately rewatch it right now.

The coming-of-age tale, directed by Lesli Linka Glatter and written by Pretty Little Liars showrunner Marlene King, centers on four young friends (all living in the same small Indiana neighborhood) played by Gaby Hoffmann, Christina Ricci, Thora Birch and Ashleigh Aston Moore, who tragically died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2007. 

Throughout the cult classic, set in the summer of 1970, the teens experience love and loss in a way that will change them. Plus, fast forward, and Demi Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Melanie Griffith and Rita Wilson play the characters as adults, reuniting for a milestone event and proving friendship really is forever.

Though Birch joked to Us Weekly in 2022 that there were some very sisterly squabbles during filming—”We were all 12 to 14 years old when we were making that film. And if anybody knows anything about 12 to 14-year-old girls, it doesn’t go well”—their bond has endured. 

“I love those ladies so much,” she said. “And, you know, I think we all played our roles perfectly.”

Who says you can’t go home again?

And with just a year to go until the film’s milestone 30th birthday, we’re paying our respects with these behind-the-scenes secrets you might not know about Now and Then, including which role Leonardo DiCaprio initially snagged and which star was the one to “get with” (their words, not ours) Devon Sawa, a.k.a. Scott Wormer.

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1. Marlene King wrote the movie when she was 10 years old and said it was about her group of friends growing up. “This really was my childhood…I had some best friends, we did séances in the graveyard, we loved a good mystery,” King said during a Q&A at a 20th anniversary screening of the movie in 2015. “And my parents were also getting divorced at that time. It really was a true-to-life thing for me.”

Samantha was based on her sister, Sandra, and King joked she herself was “everyone but Chrissy.”

2. The four younger versions of the girls were cast first and began with Christina Ricci landing the part of Roberta. For the final week of filming in Savannah, the adult counterparts were brought in. King revealed that Demi Moore (who played Samantha and was a producer on the film), Rosie O’Donnell (Roberta), Melanie Griffith (Teeny) and Rita Wilson (Chrissy) watched footage of the girls’ performances to inform their own takes on the characters. 

3. The two incarnations of the quartet were never on set at the same time. 

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4. While she eventually agreed to play the older version of Roberta, it took a lot of effort from producer Jennifer Todd and Moore to convince O’Donnell to sign on. “We really wanted Rosie and Rosie really wasn’t convinced she wanted to do it and we went on this crazy adventure,” Todd said, explaining she and Moore went to New York to see O’Donnell in Grease on Broadway in an attempt to woo her. “We did that rude, pushy thing where we went backstage afterwards, and were like, ‘Hi, can we take you to dinner?'”

5. Thora Birch revealed that she and her fellow 1970-era leading ladies were as close as sisters, which lead to some arguments on the set. “That’s how we knew we were close,” she said, “we were really good at fighting.”

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6. All four lead girls had a “wild crush” on Devon Sawa, Birch admitted. But, like, didn’t everyone have a thing for the Casper star in the ’90s? 

“There was some kind of contest, I remember they said, ‘Get with Devon,'” Todd revealed. “We were like, ‘What does ‘get with’ mean?!'”

7. While Sawa politely said “no comment,” Birch wasn’t so tight-lipped, revealing his Casper co-star Ricci won the contest. “She got out front and the other girls weren’t happy about it,” Todd spilled.

Said Sawa, “I was the only 15-year-old boy with the cast of the hottest young girls in town, so it was a lot of fun.”

8. But in an interview with E! News, Sawa credited Ricci with getting him cast as Scott. “We got along quite well in the small amount of time I did work on Casper,” he explained. “She just remembered and recommended me and I put myself on tape and I got it. We hung out a lot during the shoot.”

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9. Leonardo DiCaprio was originally set to play the role of the Vietnam War veteran the girls meet on their bike adventure, but he dropped out at the last minute. “It was a big deal because we had to get someone on a plane pretty quickly to come down,” Todd said during the 2015 screening Q&A. “And an agent had called and pitched me and said, ‘You should look at this new guy, Matt Damon.'” Alas, Todd said they didn’t even end up getting to Damon as they saw Brendan Fraser and liked him.

10. Remember the scene in the cemetery where a bird scares the girls? “That was scripted to be an owl and the owl died on set,” King revealed. “We used a hawk instead of an owl.”

11. Birch confirmed that there was actually pudding in the balloons that Teeny used to stuff her bra in the movie. “It’s the texture,” she joked. 

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12. While the four girls rode their bikes everywhere, one of the stars had never actually ridden one before filming began. “That’s really embarrassing,” Birch admitted. “It was horrible. I was the one with the skinniest tires on my bike so I was just flopping all over.”

13. The famous bike-ride sing-a-long set to “Knock Three Times” was originally scripted to include a Diana Ross song. “No one could sing it because it was too hard,” King explained of the change. 

14. The movie was originally called The Gaslight Addition, the subdivision the characters lived in. 

15. The photo of Roberta’s dead mother that she carries everywhere? It’s producer Jennifer Todd.

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16. That rumor about pausing the movie at a a certain time so you can see Sawa’s penis is so not true, according to the star. “I’ve always wanted to address that,” he said. “It’s not true, we wore these sock things, which at the age of 14 or 15, was extremely embarrassing!”

17. The young stars bonded over a very specific shared interest. “We all were oddly and creepily obsessed with Pulp Fiction,” Birch revealed. “I remember we all went and saw it like 10 times.” But the biggest Quentin Tarantino fan? “I know Christina was like, the most obsessed,” she added. “She went 14 times and announced it to everyone.”

18. Samantha’s little sister in the movie was played by Moore’s oldest daughter, Rumer Willis.

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19. One major change that went down during production wasn’t revealed until 20 years later. “The script was written, and then we shot [the movie] with the intention of Roberta being gay,” King told Entertainment Tonight in 2015. 

But when the movie was screened for test audiences, King explained, viewers “freaked out” when Roberta also served as Chrissy’s gynecologist during the labor scene.  “They were like, ‘Ew, she’s a lesbian and she’s looking at her vagina!'” King recalled. “And we were like, ‘What? Seriously? Do you really care?'”

Ultimately, the script was changed, with King saying, “It wasn’t my decision by any way, shape, or form. I know Rosie was really upset when they changed it at the last minute, and we all were.” 

A version of this story was first published on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 at 5:05 a.m. PT.