Cailee Spaeny Almost Starred In Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

Before there was Priscilla , Cailee Spaeny revealed that her first collaboration with Sofia Coppola was an eventually scrapped version of The Little Mermaid. “My first-ever callback was through Sofia,” the Alien: Romulus star told Empire . “It was for [Coppola’s] The Little Mermaid , [which] ended up not getting made.

I sent this weird self-tape, playing a mermaid with no dialogue.” In true Coppola fashion, Spaeny said it was “very strange and avant-garde.” In 2017, Spaeny and Coppola crossed paths again, when the actress auditioned for The Beguiled , a period drama starring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell and Elle Fanning.

“That didn’t end up working out,” Spaeny recalled. “I was crushed, because Sofia is the director that I zeroed in on as a young teenage girl, especially living in the Bible Belt. There’s something so freeing [in her work] and something that wasn’t really talked about for young women where I grew up.

She took young girls seriously. It really spoke to me on a personal level.” But it was through the previous two experiences that Spaeny landed her breakout role as Priscilla Presley in the eponymous 2023 film co-starring Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley.

“Then I got a call that [Coppola] wanted to meet me in New York. We had coffee, and then she pulled out her iPad and started showing me photos of Priscilla Presley,” Spaeny said. Spaeny, who will be in the second season of Netflix’s Beef , was filming Civil War alongsi.