Zooey Deschanel reveals she almost missed out on “Elf” role: 'We offered it to Katie Holmes'
- - Zooey Deschanel reveals she almost missed out on “Elf” role: 'We offered it to Katie Holmes'
Sydney BucksbaumDecember 23, 2025 at 1:40 AM
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Monica Schipper/Getty; Kristina Bumphrey/WWD via Getty
Zooey Deschanel and Katie Holmes
Son of a nutcracker!
Zooey Deschanel revealed in a new interview that she almost didn't star in Elf because Katie Holmes was first offered the role opposite Will Ferrell's Buddy the Elf.
"When I met with Jon Favreau, the director, I walked in, and he was like, 'Oh, you don't need to read. We just offered it to Katie Holmes,'" Deschanel said in Wednesday's episode of Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast. "And I was like, 'Oh, okay, cool.'"
Luckily, the New Girl star, who was 21 at the time, didn't immediately leave the audition. It turns out her low-stakes conversation with Favreau afterward helped her eventually lock down the part.
New Line/Courtesy Everett
Zooey Deschanel in 'Elf'
"He's like, 'Well, sit down and talk for a minute,'" Deschanel remembered. "I was like, 'Okay!' What was great about that was I wasn't nervous [anymore]. When you're an actor, you're first starting, and you're auditioning, you get nervous, and you're psyching yourself up. I wasn't nervous at all, because I was like, 'Well, I'm not getting the part.' It was kind of great because I was not nervous."
Holmes ultimately had to drop out of the film due to a scheduling conflict (Elf was released in November 2003, six months after the final season of Dawson's Creek finished airing). That's when Deschanel's name came back up for casting.
"They were like, 'Who should we have?'" Deschanel said. "I think the character was kind of meant to be worked around whoever played her, and they knew I sang because I had a cabaret act, so that kind of worked out with the character."
Watch Deschanel's interview in the video below:
Deschanel played Jovie, Buddy's love interest, who meets the man-sized elf while working the holiday shift at Gimbels. Buddy falls for her when he overhears her singing in the shower at the department store, and can't help but join her rendition of "Baby It's Cold Outside."
The meet-cute is not so romantic for Jovie, who is understandably startled when the stranger (who has limited social skills after growing up in the North Pole) starts singing along with her.
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"When I read it, I remember I was giggling out loud, and I was really enjoying myself," Deschanel said of the script. "I was like, 'That must be a good sign.' I've taken that as my litmus test ever since then — almost every time that I laugh out loud while reading a script, because if you laugh out loud while reading a script, then you're probably going to laugh even harder when you see someone doing it well."
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
