'Bridesmaids' cut a gross-out Vegas stripper scene involving 'ball sweat' to avoid comparisons with 'The Hangover'
- "Bridesmaids" director Paul Feig told Insider about a raunchy stripper scene that was never shot.
- Once "The Hangover" got big he decided the characters shouldn't make it to Vegas.
- "We did not want to hear, 'This is the female 'Hangover,'" Feig said. "That was our kryptonite."
If things went according to plan, "Bridesmaids" would have had a super cringey Las Vegas stripper scene.
Director Paul Feig said his classic comedy about a bridesmaid (Kristen Wiig) trying to plan her best friend's wedding (Maya Rudolph) was all set to have the group party hard in Sin City.
"We had this big scene in a male strip club where they are all drunk and Annie gets pulled onstage by this cowboy stripper," Feig, celebrating the movie's 10th anniversary this month, recalled to Insider of the scene originally in the script. "He has her lie down on the dance floor and dances over the top of her, but ball sweat drips into her open mouth as she's screaming."
Feig said they worked on the sequence for months and planned to make it one of the movie's memorable moments, but while they were prepping the movie "The Hangover," about a group of friends who party too hard in Las Vegas for their bachelor party, opened in theaters and became a huge hit.
"'The Hangover' did Vegas so well, all we're going to do is probably be a pale comparison," Feig said. "We did not want to be compared to 'The Hangover.' We did not want to hear, 'This is the female 'Hangover.' That was our kryptonite."
So Feig decided that the women would never make it to Vegas. Instead, everything would fall apart on the flight to Sin City. Feig said co-screenwriter Annie Mumolo (who plays the scared passenger sitting next to Kristen Wiig on the plan) was tasked with putting together the new sequence shortly before cameras began to roll on the movie.
"I was getting emailed the pages while on a location scout about the bit of her seeing a colonial woman on the wing of the plane," Feig said. "I just thought it was hilarious. She really pulled it together."
The plane sequence became one of the classic moments of the movie as it followed Wigg's character Annie, who doesn't like to fly, getting more and more outlandish during the flight after Helen (Rose Byrne) gives her a pill to calm her down.
"Kristen was just on fire," Feig said of shooting the plane scenes, which featured memorable lines like Annie saying she's "ready to party!!!" and sneaking into first class, telling the flight attendant, "Help me, I'm poor."
"She ad-libbed a lot of her stuff," Feig said.
"Bridesmaids" would go on to become a comedy classic and earn Oscar nominations for Melissa McCarthy's performance as well as Wiig and Mumolo for screenwriting.