10 Things You May Not Know About ‘Bridesmaids’

Bridesmaids, the 2011 comedy starring Kristen Wiig and a group of equally hilarious actresses, has spanned an endless amount of movie nights and rewatching. But even the most fervent fans of the movie might not know quite everything.

The movie follows the ups and downs of a group of women brought together by an upcoming wedding, all while Wiig’s character, Annie, comes to terms with the space she feels between her and BFF Lillian, played by Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey round out the bridesmaids crew. Here are some things you may not know about the hit comedy:

The movie’s co-writer plays the nervous passenger on the plane

One of the most hilarious scenes in the movie finds Annie having to sit in coach while the rest of the bridal party gets to fly in first class while they’re heading to the bachelorette party. Annie ends up sitting next to a woman who is equally scared of flying, who is actually played by Annie Mumolo, Wiig’s longtime friend and co-writer on the movie.

Though Mumolo was originally going to have a larger role, she became pregnant and instead decided to step down.

“I was seven months pregnant when we began shooting, and I had my son a week and a half after we wrapped. I couldn’t play that role, so we redeveloped it and we recast it. Now I have my amazing 10-year-old son that I would just never trade for it,” said Mumolo in a New York Times profile.

Wiig and Mumolo finally got a chance to star together in 2021’s Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar, with the characters inspired by their time writing Bridesmaids.

Rudolph was pregnant during filming

Rudolph was hiding a big secret from the audience – the actress was pregnant with her third child with her director husband Paul Thomas Anderson while filming the movie. To hide her pregnancy, Rudolph’s character often wore belts with her outfits and they tended to be looser around her stomach.

The actress welcomed her son on July 3, 2011, just over two months after the movie’s premiere on April 28, 2011.

Paul Rudd appears in a deleted scene

Jon Hamm wasn’t supposed to be the only famous face Wiig’s character dates in the movie. The actress also shot a scene in which her character goes on a date with Paul Rudd, and the scene is even included in the bonus features on the DVD.

The scene features Rudd as a blind date who turns out to be crazy, with the two spending the date at an ice rink. Rudd’s character is set off when a kid skates over his finger and he goes ballistic on the other kids.

But the scene didn’t make the last cut of the film. In the end, Hamm and Chris O’Dowd’s characters were enough to flesh out Annie’s love life.

“It just didn’t ring true that in addition to Jon and Chris, she’d be also going out on other dates to try and find more love,” director Paul Feig explained to Entertainment Weekly. “It made more sense that she’d be caught between these two guys. Very sadly, we cut all the blind date sequences out of the movie.”

Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph at the Los Angeles premiere of “Bridesmaids”

McCarthy is married to ‘Air Marshal John’ in real life

McCarthy had no problem finding chemistry with her air marshal love interest in the movie. McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone, have since starred together in almost all of McCarthy’s movies, with Falcone often taking on director duties. They continue to work together with their production company On the Day Productions.

Byrne learned Thai for the engagement party scene

Though Byrne hadn’t been known for her comedic chops before Bridesmaids, the actress blew the cast away with her hilarious antics and improvisations while filming. One of those was during the engagement party, in which Byrne’s Helen tries to one-up Wiig’s Annie as the one closest to Rudolph’s Lillian.

This results in a back-and-forth as both ladies giving speeches at the engagement party, and Byrne tried a take in which Helen speaks Thai in her speech. After the producers loved it, Byrne had to actually learn some words Thai in order to make the scene authentic.

Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas turned into real-life roommates

Viewers find out just how horrible Annie’s living situation is when they meet Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas, who play her roommates after Annie’s bakery went bankrupt. The two got along so well during filming that they actually decided to live together after the movie wrapped.

“We played roommates so well in Bridesmaids we thought we’d do it for real. Except instead of annoying Kristen Wiig, we’re now annoying all the neighbors nearby,” Wilson later told Us Weekly.

The movie earned two Oscar nominations

Bridesmaids was a hit with audiences and critics alike, earning two Oscar nominations. Wiig and Mumolo were nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2012 ceremony, with the trophy going to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris.

Meanwhile, McCarthy was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The award went to Octavia Spencer for The Help.

The movie originally wasn’t supposed to be about a wedding

The movie centers around Lillian’s wedding, but that detail wasn’t even supposed to be in the movie. The script took years to write, with Wiig and Mumolo starting in 2006. According to Wiig, the two were just looking to make an ensemble comedy at first.

“In the earlier drafts, for the first three years, there wasn’t even a wedding in it at the end,” Wiig explained. “We didn’t really set out to make it different from other movies or make any statement about those movies… we just wanted to write a fun script where our friends could come in and play and write something that had a lot of women in it.”

McCarthy based her character on Guy Fieri

McCarthy’s role was hard to cast, with producers and director Feig even almost cutting out of the movie, but then McCarthy’s wild take on it made it work.

“Really, when I first read it, the first person I thought of was Guy Fieri from the Food Network. I wanted to do the shirt, the Kangol,” McCarthy said. “Every scene I would have my glasses on the back of my head. I tried for a long time to convince them to let me wear short, white, spiky hair, and they were like, ‘You can’t actually be Guy Fieri.’ Cut it off at some point!”

There was supposed to be an actual Vegas bachelorette party

The original version of the script did include an actual trip to Las Vegas. Instead of Annie’s character getting everyone kicked off the plane on the way there, the ladies were supposed to get up to all sorts of hijinks in Vegas.

But producer Judd Apatow thought it’d be too similar to The Hangover, which had just been released. He thought it was best to cut the Vegas scenes out of the script, which gave the cast time to improvise the plane scene and make it much longer.