Amy Adams charmed audiences as Princess Giselle in Disney's Enchanted. But did you know she almost lost the role to these a-list stars?

Once upon a time, a princess found herself in New York City...

That was the simple but irresistible premise of 2007's Enchanted, which proved to be a star-making role for Amy Adams. Yes, the star, well, enchanted audiences as Giselle, a princess from Andalasia who is sent away just before she gets fairy tale ending to New York City. That's where she falls in love with Robert, a slightly jaded lawyer played by Patrick Dempsey, a.k.a. Grey's Anatomy's resident dreamboat.

The Kevin Lima-directed movie became an instant success after its November 2022 release, earning more than $340 million worldwide at the box office on a budget of $85 million. And 15 years later, fans finally got their wish as the long-awaited sequel, Disenchanted, debuted on Disney+, reuniting Adams and Dempsey to reveal if Giselle and Robert truly got their happily ever after.

"I'm really grateful," Adams told E! News in 2022. "It's still a very special film to me, so I'm glad that that's a sentiment that's shared with others. I really hope that they see this sequel as a love letter to the first movie and sort of a natural evolution for the characters."

Costar Idina Menzel holds an equally special place for the film (and its sequel) in her heart. is reprising her role as Nancy, also got sentimental about the sequel coming to life.

"I see what a great movie it is and was," Menzel shared with E! at the time "I think that was an incremental thing. It started, people loved it, but through the years, I find that people love it even more, especially if they're just discovering it."

You too can discover the magic if you read on for these 20 behind the scenes secrets...

1. The initial script of Enchanted, written by Bill Kelly, was bought by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Sonnenfeld/Josephson Productions in 1997.

2. However, the original version was "a much darker movie," according to director Kevin Lima, who first read the script in 2001.

"It just seemed perfect and I begged for five years for the movie," Lima told The Hollywood Reporter in 2007. "It had been in development, I guess, for seven years before it got green lit with me. I think they were just trying to find the tone. How do you create a movie that's self-referential? How do you create a movie at Disney about Disney?"

3. While the studio initially struggled to strike the right balance of sincerity and satire, Lima pointed to the Shrek franchise as a way to hone the tone.

"I had the idea to do it as more of a loving homage," he told THR. "I said, 'You know, there's a different way to do this.' I spent five months trying to convince them of that until finally they realized it was an avenue they were willing to go down and explore."

4. In earlier iterations, Reese Witherspoon and Kate Hudson were considered to star.

5. Three hundred actresses auditioned for the role of Giselle, but Lima immediately knew Amy Adams was his princess when she walked in the room.

"She looked like a Disney character," the filmmaker told THR. "She's got those beautiful round eyes and fair skin. Boy, I just crossed my fingers and hoped that she understood how to play the character."

Spoiler: Adams completely nailed it, with Lima calling her a "revelation."

"I was looking for the whole time was someone who didn't judge the character's naivete, an actor who could disappear into the role and never wink at the role while they were playing it and ever think that what they were doing was ridiculous," he explained. "Truly, she was the only woman who came into the room with that quality. I knew in that moment that I could make this movie."

6. But Lima's early conversations with the studio "had to do with the esthetic of casting a star verses an unknown, or, in Amy's case, a relative newcomer," Lima shared in an intervew with MovieMaker, adding he was pushing to crown a less established actress. While Disney originally wanted a major star, Adams managed to enchant them.

"The discussions with the studio after that audition were quite easy," Lima revealed. "Amy's audition tape was all that was needed to convince them that Giselle had arrived."

7. To create Giselle, Lima pulled inspiration from several early Disney princesses, including "about 80 percent Snow White, with some traits borrowed from Cinderella and Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty," the director told USA Today, "although her spunkiness comes from Ariel from The Little Mermaid."

8. While Patrick Dempsey thought the movie "was a great idea and so unique" when he signed on to play Giselle's jaded love interest Robert, the Grey's Anatomy alum admitted he "wasn't really comfortable" when they began filming.

"It was very difficult to do," Dempsey told Cinema.com. "There are all these different styles going on at once and it was extremely challenging. There were times when I wanted to put the scrubs back on and go back to Grey's, because I kept worrying that I was too serious or not funny enough. I felt profoundly insecure throughout the entire course of the film."

9. One unanticipated problem Lima ran into after casting McDreamy? The actor's admirers.

"He can't go anywhere in public without his fans just going crazy," Lima told THR. "There were a multitude of times where we had to ask them, ‘Please, please be quiet. We're trying to shoot a movie here' because they were yelling, 'We love you, Dr. McDreamy' the whole time! He was really great about it because he would go up and talk to them and give them a moment of his time and say, 'I'll come back when I get a break.' So we had to really work the crowd."

Source:
courtesy of E!ONLINE

by TIERNEY BRICKER

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