Lola’s nemesis, Carla Santini, is played by Megan Fox. “Megan is a wonderful young actress. We met a lot of girls for Carla, and Megan was one of the sweetest girls that I’ve ever met, yet she plays one of the best villains I’ve ever seen. She’s also extraordinarily beautiful, and audiences will think well of her in this movie,” says Shapiro.
Fox has vivid memories of mean-spirited girls from her own experiences in middle school, but she is quick to note the differences between herself and Carla. “Carla seems confident, but she’s actually very insecure inside. That causes her to want to be in control all the time. She likes to make other people feel inferior, because that makes her feel better about herself. I wouldn’t want to be like Carla, but she’s a fun character to play.”
Leider was quick to see Marienthal’s potential for the role of Sam. “Eli is an extremely talented and intelligent young man. He’s brilliant – he’s got his choice of going to Brown, Harvard, or Princeton; he writes and performs slam poetry for fun. He’s an intellectual guy. This role is a far cry from what he’s done in the ‘American Pie’ movies. He’s a very serious actor.”
The producers are particularly pleased to have Carol Kane in the role of the eccentric drama teacher Miss Baggoli. “If anybody deserves to be called extraordinary, it’s Carol Kane,” comments Shapiro.
“Carol plays a music teacher, a drama teacher, and someone who’s very, very strict. In the middle of the reading, we all started laughing, because she’s very funny. She turns to me and says, ‘Do not laugh when I’m teaching.’ She did it in the character of Miss Baggoli and of course everybody got hysterical after that. There was nobody for Miss Baggoli except Carol Kane,” recounts Shapiro.
Like several of the other actors, Kane was captivated by the strength of the script. “I thought it was hilarious the first time I read it. It was also very, very well written, with three dimensional adult characters. A lot of ‘teen movies’ are not well written, and they’re not gonna be interesting for adults. I feel this film crosses over because of the integrity of the writing.”
Sugarman and Kane honed the character together. “Sara had a lot to tell me about my character, because she felt that my character was like a drama teacher that she had had when she was growing up in Wales. She told me a lot of interesting details about that woman. Miss Baggoli emerged out of a combination of what I brought to her and what Sara told me,” says Kane.
Kane prepared extensively, Shapiro recalls. “She had to conduct an orchestra. And we gave her conducting lessons at her insistence. She had to play the piano, so she took piano lessons. Carol Kane comes prepared.”
Kane is well known for her prodigious talent for improvisation, and which she employed in her performance. “Good improvisation comes out of good writing. Even after Sara called ‘cut,’ I could keep being Miss Baggoli – the character was written so well that she could keep on living beyond the confines of the page. I had a great time with that.”
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