If it weren’t for Molly Ringwald‘s headshot landing on John Hughes‘ desk, the world might have never seen the now-classic film Sixteen Candles.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Ringwald shared that she never had to audition for Hughes because their first collaboration was written with her in mind.
“He had gotten my picture from a stack of headshots from ICM, and he just had it up on his wall, and he wrote Sixteen Candles over a weekend, looking at my picture,” she told the late night host. “So, when it was time to cast it, he cast the girl in the picture.”
Ringwald starred alongside Anthony Michael Hall in Hughes’ 1984 film, before reuniting with both men for The Breakfast Club. The writer-director offered the actors the 1985 film when they finished filming Sixteen Candles, and the Riverdale actress said she immediately wanted to take on the part.
Not only did the cast rehearse for two or more weeks prior to production starting, but also they helped restructure the script after Hughes changed a lot of it by the time they were going to begin filming.
“He was trying to please everyone, trying to please the studio and just kind of adding stuff,” she recalled. “There was a naked teacher in there at one point, swimming. And he said, ‘Are you excited about doing this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m excited, but it’s really different than it was, you know, when I agreed to do it.’”
The next day, he brought in a massive stack of papers and sat down with the cast. Together, they went through them all and shared what they felt should be kept, re-added or removed.
“He was really collaborative,” she continued. “They were so well-written that we would always just kind of do it as written, and then he would say, ‘Now just do what you want.’”
Ringwald’s newest project, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, premieres on FX on Jan. 31.
