Perfect match
Katherine Heigl lands a ‘Plum’ role in One For The Money.
FOR years, there was one mystery that author Janet Evanovich couldn’t crack: finding the right Hollywood actress to embody Stephanie Plum, the crime-solving heroine of her best-selling books.
A major break occurred when Evanovich saw 2008’s 27 Dresses, notably the scene where Katherine Heigl’s straitlaced character rushes from a bar cursing at the top of her lungs.
Discussing the moment with Heigl for the first time during a joint interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Evanovich explains that, right then, everything clicked.
“I just knew it,” Evanovich says to Heigl. “From that instant, you were Stephanie Plum to me.”
From January, Heigl, 33, was Plum to the rest of the world when the film adaptation of Evanovich’s first novel, One For The Money, hit theatres. Seventeen years after the book was released, the actress will finally put a face to the lingerie saleswoman turned bounty hunter who has sparked a behemoth 80 million copies in book sales (including nine No. 1 USA Today best sellers) and an audience of diehard fans.
“I don’t know why it took so long but as far as I’m concerned the search is over,” says Evanovich, 68, who recently released her 18th Plum novel, Explosive Eighteen. “Every time I write Stephanie Plum, it’s going to be Katherine Heigl’s face there. She totally nailed it.”
Amazingly, Heigl’s casting had nothing to do with Evanovich’s 27 Dresses epiphany, because the author had relinquished any say in production matters when she sold the rights to One For The Money before it was published in 1994. Despite the early sale, there was no concrete movement on a film adaptation for years. Evanovich continued churning out new, increasingly successful novels, while actresses’ names occasionally surfaced as potential players – none to the author’s total satisfaction.
“Every now and then I would get a phone call that would be: Jennifer Lopez is going to be attached to this,” says Evanovich, clearly unimpressed. “Or Reese Witherspoon. There was never anybody really there.” Her fans clamored for Sandra Bullock. “They could see her with the dark hair. And she has great comic timing.”
The author, who was a successful romance writer before moving to mystery writing in the early 1990s, never had a Hollywood personality in mind for the sassy character she was creating. Plum featured a little bit of Evanovich herself and some of her daughter Alex, then 20. But that changed once she set eyes on the former Grey’s Anatomy star.
“I had been going around to everybody say- ing Katherine Heigl has to be Stephanie Plum and then one day I got that phone call saying that it was Katherine,” says Evanovich. “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
On the set of 2009’s The Ugly Truth, producer Gary Lucchesi had presented Heigl with a copy of One For The Money. The avid reader was hooked.“two months later someone was able to get me to come out of the bedroom after I had gone through 10 books,” says Heigl. “(They are) so addicting.”
Lucchesi and Lakeshore Entertainment acquired the rights with their choice Heigl to star as the unemployed Plum, who takes a job as a rookie bail bondsman hunting down a cop accused of murder. The suspect happens to be her hunky ex-boyfriend (Jason O’mara). The View’s Sherri Shepherd was cast as Plum’s street-level informant Lula and screen legend Debbie Reynolds signed on as kooky Grandma Mazur.
But a major hurdle lay ahead: fans were not pleased that Heigl is famous for her blond hair while Plum is a brunette.
Heigl tried dyeing her hair, but then had to go to a plan B to get the desired look. “I wigged it,” she says. “Sorry.”
Hair done, Heigl moved onto the finer aspects of bounty-hunter training. She took her first trip to a gun range where she proved to be a sure shot. She also showed impressive skill behind the wheel of a three-ton, stickshift truck in another scene, says producer Lucchesi.
Her attention to detail also played into her dedication to keeping the movie true to the book.“i became very possessive of Janet’s material,” says Heigl. “I was really loud about how important it was to honor the book.”
Evanovich, meanwhile, stayed in the dark during the film process. “I always felt once it goes into movie land, the book belongs to someone else,” she says.
So neither producers nor Heigl had any idea what Evanovich would think once she finally saw the completed film. Evanovich concedes that she too fretted about the final result and put off the screening for months.
“I was terrified to see it,” says Evanovich. “But when I did it was everything I could have wanted and more. I was almost in tears when the movie ended. I was so relieved.”
The author’s stamp of approval caused the filmmakers to literally pop the Champagne.
“That was the best call we got in the entire process ... that Janet loved the movie,” says Heigl, exhaling dramatically. “We were like, ‘Thank God!’”
Movie wrapped, Heigl reached out to Evanovich and the two immediately talked over the phone for an hour and a half for the first time about everything from dog rescues to kids. This led to an instant e-mail relationship.
After their first in-person meeting for this interview, the two escaped back to Heigl’s Los Feliz, California house for a home-cooked meal that lasted late into the evening. Evanovich reported back that she was especially tickled when the Hollywood star searched in vain to find all the ingredients for a martini.
“It was like Stephanie searching through her apartment for a Snickers bar,” says Evanovich. “I knew she was one of us.”
The ingredients for a suitable martini were eventually found and now the duo feel they have the ingredients for future Plum adaptations for the screen. With 18 novels in the can (and counting), it could lead to unlimited possibilities.
Or a new set of problems, since Plum remains 32 years old throughout the series: a tough feat to mimic, even for Heigl.
“This could be a dilemma. I’ll have to keep my face frozen with Botox so I can be ageless for years,” jokes Heigl. “Jason (O’mara) and I were talking about it. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, if we do all 18 of these books how old will we be? How will we pull this off?’”
“But if we shoot six at a time,” she adds in a light-bulb moment. “There we go.” – USA Today/mct Information Services.
Oneforthemoney opens in cinemas nationwide tomorrow.