Paul Rudd almost lost his ‘Clueless’ role over a haircut

An ironclad rule in moviemaking is that only the director gets to call cut. Young Paul Rudd didn’t know that went the same for hair.

On the latest episode of Good Hang With Amy Poehler, Amy Poehler‘s still-new-enough-to-be-considered-new podcast, she had her ol’ chum Rudd on to yap about his long career, as well as to hype up his newest comedy Friendship with Tim Robinson. Naturally, talk turned to his breakout, Clueless, a movie that is somehow turning 30 in just a few months. (Ugh! As if!)

When Rudd auditioned for the part of Josh in writer-director Amy Heckerling‘s modernized Jane Austen tale, he had long hair. (In other parts of the podcast both he and call-in guest Jon Hamm compared the pre-fame Rudd to INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. We will now take a swooning pause as you envision this.)

A few weeks after the audition, Rudd remembered, “I wasn’t thinking about it, [and] I was walking past a barber shop and I went in and said, ‘Just buzz my head.’ They went with the clippers, vttttt, cut it all off.”

He continued, “A week later, I went into a restaurant and Amy Heckerling was eating there. She looked at me and froze and said, ‘What did you do?! What did you do to your hair??!'”

Rudd responded in a way that, dare we say, may have come off as a little clueless — and simply said, “I shaved it off.”

According to Rudd, Heckerling then stammered, “You auditioned for this part — you were maybe gonna get this part, but you can’t cut your hair.”

Rudd then did an impersonation of his blithe younger self, riffing, “I was so, ‘Ah, well, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be!’ I was so stupidly cavalier about it.”

He then explained that he had to wear a wig for a screen test — the concept of which brought much merriment to his Wet Hot American Summer costar Poehler. Luckily, enough time went by before production started that his hair grew back just enough that he could shoot the role au naturel.

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Heckerling, creator of other cinematic touchstones like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Johnny Dangerously, once recalled the story a little differently.

When she saw Rudd and asked, “What did you do?” Heckerling said Rudd fired back with a “Well, I didn’t hear from you.”

Of course, if you’ve ever seen Heckerling in an interview, you know about her no-nonsense, Bronx-born punk rock attitude. We have a hunch the dreamy 25-year-old Rudd’s response only further endeared him to her.

Clueless, loosely based on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, was first conceived by Heckerling as a television series. She and Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin cast Alicia Silverstone in the central role of Cher Horowitz after she broke out in an Aerosmith video. The film was a huge stepping stone for a slew of performers like Donald Faison, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Jeremy Sisto, and others. The list of big stars who didn’t make the cut for Clueless is also pretty legendary.

The mid-budget film was a significant box office success, inspiring a spinoff series, a more recent reboot series, a Broadway musical, a series of YA books, and, best of all, a CD-ROM video game.

Behold: the moment in which all people of Earth first fell in love with Paul Rudd (with a little help on the soundtrack from Jewel, Eric Carmen, and Sergei Rachmaninoff).

You can check out Rudd’s complete hang on the latest episode of Good Hang With Amy Poehler below.