Bo Derek Says She Was Cast ‘Last Minute’ in ‘Tommy Boy’: ‘I Don’t Know Who Dropped Out’

It has been 30 years since Tommy Boy was released, and Bo Derek just dropped a bombshell about being cast in the film.

“I wasn’t cast until the last minute. I don’t know who dropped out in Beverly’s part, but I was in Hong Kong,” Bo, 68, told Cinemablend on Monday, March 31. “I got a call and flew all night to Toronto and then shot the next morning. So who knows? And no one would tell me still to this day. No one tells me. There are rumors of who was cast as that part, but I still don’t know who it was.”

The actress portrayed Beverly Barish-Burns Callahan in the 1995 Peter Segal-directed film, which also starred Chris Farley, David Spade and Brian Dennehy.

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Of course, fans of the film remember Bo’s iconic scene in which she emerged from a swimming pool in a blue bikini before it’s revealed she’s marrying Tommy’s father. Bo hinted that the scene was a nod to her movie 10, in which she starred alongside Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, Robert Webber.

“You know, I’ve never asked anyone that specific question, but I know when I read it, I had a feeling it was slipped in one night,” she said of the Tommy Boy script and whether or not it was meant to reference 10. “They cast me and it always got a good laugh every time I saw it with people.”

Bo also looked back on the film and working with her costars in an interview with CNN to celebrate the movie’s 30th anniversary.

“You know, David and Chris, every take could change the scene completely and surprise you and make you laugh so you couldn’t get used to a joke they did in take one because by take five, it’s completely different and I’m still struggling … I can watch the film today, and I can tell you where I’m just about to lose it,” she told the outlet in a virtual interview.

While the vibe on set was full of endless laughter and impeccable comedic timing, Peter, 62, revealed he tried to quit the film at one point, but it was not for the reason some might think.

“Normally, when you’re doing an SNL film, you shoot in their hiatus, the summer hiatus,” he told Film School Rejects in a 2015 interview. “We had used our summer hiatus to figure out what the movie was going to be, and by the time we did figure it out, we were in the SNL season. So it became, you know, really difficult. At one point, even I thought it got so out of control — the fact that Fred had to go back to SNL and the script really wasn’t there — that I didn’t think the movie would be possible. So I even tried to leave. I tried to quit the movie. And you know, I was threatened with a lawsuit, so I had to stay.”

“The guys had this crazy schedule, that they would fly in a plane back to New York, from Toronto, and then they’d work a couple of days at SNL for rehearsal, then fly back, work a couple days on the movie, then fly back, work a couple more days on SNL,” associate producer Michael Ewing agreed. “So they’d do the show, then fly back on Sunday night.”