The 'Chucky' star spoke with ET recently, and looked back on his career.
Devon Sawa is looking back over his career to one of the biggest projects he's ever worked on -- the iconic 2000 music video for Eminem's "Stan."
Sawa recently sat down with ET, while promoting the third season of the horror TV series 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.
While the video has remained a cultural touchstone, Sawa said there were some issues and hurdles to overcome when the project first began.
"I'll never forget, they told me on the day that I was going to lip-sync it," Sawa said. "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," Sawa continued. "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."
As hard as it is to imagine someone else playing the tragic title character in Eminem's epistolary rap masterpiece, the role almost went to someone else.
"They went out to Macaulay Culkin first," Sawa said. "I think that they wanted him, 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]," Sawa recalled. "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," he added.
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."
In the video, Sawa's Stan is a rabid and obsessive fan of Eminem, and the lyrics are written as letters from Stan to the rapper, as they get increasingly unhinged. Sawa sported a white tank top and short, blonde hair for the look -- which was different than any style he'd been used to beforehand.
"They bleached my hair for that," Sawa recalled. "I pitched it on Chucky and [show creator] Don Mancini shut it down."
With his role on Chucky, Sawa is in his horror element, so to speak, pulling off the horror-comedy genre like a seasoned pro.
"I'd been watching horror since I was a young boy, and I'd never really thought of doing it," Sawa said. "Then when I did Idle Hands [in 1999], I just was like, 'I should be doing this! This is what I love.' And then Final Destination came along, and then everything after that."
"Then when Chucky came along, it was kind of that Idle Hands feel. It was a lot of comedy mixed with a lot of gore and horror, and nothing was serious, and we were all having a good time," he said. "That's probably why I love doing Chucky so much. It reminds me so much of that kind of world, [like] Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, those kinds of films."
The second half of Chucky season 3 returns April 10 on SYFY and USA Network, with new episodes each Wednesday.
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