In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Devon Sawa looks back over his career to one of the biggest projects he has ever worked on: the iconic 2000 music video for Eminem‘s “Stan,” from The Marshall Mathers LP album and reveals that the first choice for the video was “Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin.
Vancouver, Canada-born actor has recently sat down with ET, while promoting the 3rd season of the horror TV shows “Chucky,” and he looked back at his past works as part of a career retrospective, and the cultural impact of his performance in the famous music video, playing the titular Stan.
“I will never forget, they told me on the day that I was going to lip-sync it. I remember, after the first take I did, Dre running in and being like, ‘It was good, but can you try it with some rhythm this time?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ And that was kind of how the day went. But it’s such an iconic video. Dr. Dre was there, D12 was there, I think Snoop was wandering around, Cypress Hill. It was just such a wild three days of filmmaking, it was amazing.” said Devon Sawa.
Then he continued: “They went out to Macaulay Culkin first. I think that they wanted Macaulay Culkin, and he wasn’t available, or didn’t want to do it or whatever. Then Dre, who had just seen Final Destination and was a fan, suggested me. There happened to be somebody in the casting office that knew somebody who was friends with me, and they called me that way… and it ended up working out pretty good. It’s also one of the proudest things I’ve been a part of.”
It’s been nearly 25 years since the video came out, and Sawa admitted that he still knows the lyrics, and has found himself occasionally singing along. “If it came on in my car or something like that, I would jam along to it,” he said. “I’ll tell you one thing, I know it better now than I did that day. Because I’ve heard it millions of times since.”
