As the trailer for “Cloverfield” suggests, the first 20 minutes of the film are spent meeting a group of attractive young Manhattanites at a farewell party before all the monster stuff begins. One of them is Marlene (Lizzy Caplan), whom Hud (TJ Miller) — our evening cameraman — has a crush on. Marlene doesn’t know many people at the party, including the guest of honor, Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is heading to Japan to start a new job. When New York is suddenly attacked by a giant creature raging in the city, she has to follow and try to survive.
Caplan had her breakout role a few years earlier in the hugely successful “Mean Girls” and her role in “Cloverfield” didn’t come up for interviews very often. When given the chance to talk about it, she seems to fondly remember the production process, including the unorthodox audition process devised by producer JJ Abrams to keep it a secret. She went in to read her part thinking it was a role in a romantic comedy, she said PhimWeb:
“The scenes they gave us in the first part of the audition were just party scenes, so it was like ‘We have to prepare this place for a party!’ It’s like the biggest drama going on, so we’re just assuming we’ve seen the character breakdown and the characters are there but it doesn’t say anything about a random monster. It’s just, ‘We’ve got to be ready for this two hours, so stop messing around.’ It’s completely lame.”
Caplan and the other candidates weren’t given a script before secret auditions, and she only found out that “Cloverfield” was a monster movie after she got the role.
