Goldie Hawn says she was ‘irate’ over initial ‘First Wives Club’ script: ‘It was very male bashing’
Queen Goldie.
Goldie Hawn revealed that she was instrumental in getting “The First Wives Club” rewritten after being extremely dissatisfied with the initial script for the 1996 comedy film.
“I fought for every single thing I could because what happened with ‘First Wives Club,’ we all turned it down because it was very male bashing and didn’t want to do it,” Hawn, 78, said on the June 19 episode of Kelly Ripa’s podcast.
“I didn’t wanna do it and then suddenly, the girls said, ‘Okay, Goldie, you talk. You do it,’ ” she added.
Hawn, who co-starred with Bette Midler and Diane Keaton in the film, about a trio of jilted women seeking revenge on their ex-spouses, said that she “became the voice” of the project.
“One time they came to my apartment in New York and met with me, and it was a writer who was gonna sweeten it and make it better and all that,” she recalled. “I don’t know how many notes I gave him, and I was doing ‘Everyone Says I Love You’ at that point, so it was like, ‘Oh, I have a day off. Okay, now I gotta spend it doing this. Okay, fine.’ “
Hawn continued: “We went and did the reading, but I didn’t show it to anybody until that day, and we went and did the reading around the table. There was a few laughs and that was it. And I became so irate and I went over, and I said, ‘I spent a whole half a day with you and I gave you a million notes and not one of them was implemented.'”
The “Foul Play” star said she worked with her producer to rewrite the script for “The First Wives Club,” and after they were done, the writers “thanked” her for what she did. Hawn did, however, note that rewriting the script was “really hard.”
“You can’t create something without disturbance,” she told Ripa when explaining why she changed the film. “It’s going to happen and if they’re just gonna be able to just go with status quo, we’re better than that and the idea is better than that and we have to be able to look at the story as well. So I stick to my guns and I’m tenacious.”
Hawn added, “One of our great film writers actually read that script. He’s the greatest script doctor we’ve ever had and he’s a friend of mine, so I took it over to him and he said and Kurt [Russell] said, ‘You know, Goldie, this could be a career-ender. This script is in trouble.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve got some ideas on how to fix it.’ And that’s what I did.”
The beloved actress said she knew there were “a lot of things that were wrong” with the film.
“I watched the movie afterwards and then I was asked to bring somebody on to rewrite the last section of the movie,” she recalled. “I told everybody in the first place this wasn’t going well, and now I became the bad guy because they had to redo it and the director had to redo it. So he would sit there with his arms crossed and say, ‘Alright, Goldie. Well, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?’ “
“The First Wives Club” was directed by Hugh Wilson and made $181 million at the worldwide box office. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score.
Despite the film’s success, there was never a sequel. Midler, 78, explained why in an interview with People in 2022.
“I used to lobby for ‘First Wives Club’ too, but there were political reasons they didn’t want to do that again. And it always broke my heart,” said Midler.
“I really felt that it was a pretty serious diss, because when women have hits, it’s a fluke,” she added. “But when men have hits, isn’t it great? At least that’s what they told us on ‘First Wives.'”
