I was supposed to speak Spanish in the pilot (episode) and when it came to shooting my Spanish part, I spoke French for so long my whole life, (I couldn't do it)
TV bosses were forced to re-imagine Christina Ricci's bilingual PAN AM character because the actress "completely froze" every time she tried to film her lines in Spanish.
Ricci's much-anticipated new U.S. period piece, about the iconic Pan American World Airways stewardesses, debuts on Sunday (25Sep11), and she admits her poor language skills almost cost her the part.
She explains, "I was supposed to speak Spanish in the pilot (episode) and when it came to shooting my Spanish part, I spoke French for so long my whole life, (I couldn't do it).
"(So) they recorded someone speaking the Spanish part. They had somebody do it so that I could hear it and imitate it, and memorise it that way. But they did it with somebody with a true, from Madrid, Spanish accent...
"So the gist of it is, I got so confused and so scared, and it was the first time in my entire life in my acting career, that I completely froze - could not get through a single line of my dialogue. (I) was such a flop, that they cut out my scene. And they rewrote my character, so that I don't speak any languages."
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