Zooey Deschanel Revealed That She Almost Lost Her “Elf” Role To A VERY Different Actor

Elf is, of course, a holiday classic. If you haven’t already watched it already this holiday season, you’re probably about to right now.

Besides being a comic powerhouse for Will Ferrell, Elf also marked something of a breakout role for Zooey Deschanel, who played Buddy the Elf’s love interest Jovie.

Elf is one of those movies that is so beloved that just imagining a detail from the film being changed might just totally alter your perception of the movie entirely — which is why Zooey’s recent revelation that she almost didn’t star in the film at all is more than a little fascinating.

Zooey said that she only locked down the role of Jovie after Katie had to withdraw from Elf due to “some scheduling conflict.”

“When I met with Jon Favreau, the director, I walked in and he was like, ‘Oh, you don’t need to read. We just offered it to Katie Holmes,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh, OK, cool.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, sit down and talk for a minute.’ I was like, ‘OK!’”

“What was great about that was, I wasn’t nervous. When you’re an actor, you’re first starting, and you’re auditioning, you get nervous, and you’re psyching yourself up. I wasn’t nervous at all, because I was like, ‘Well, I’m not getting the part.’ It was kind of great cause I was not nervous.”

Of course, if you’ve seen Elf even once, you know that Jovie’s singing talents play a pivotal role in the film — and as it turns out, that aspect of the character was tailored around Zooey’s eventual casting.

“They were like, ‘Who should we have?’” she explained. “I think the character was kind of meant to be worked around whoever played her, and they knew I sang because I had a cabaret act, so that kind of worked out with the character.”