Cristin Milioti studied quantum physics to sound like an expert in Palm Springs, but all her hard work was dumped on the cutting room floor.
The film’s original script featured a “long speech”, in which her character finally figured out the science behind the time loop in which she and her co-star Andy Samberg get caught up while attending a wedding in the California desert.
And the Fargo star wanted to sound totally convincing, so she hit the textbooks and learned “pages and pages” of complicated dialogue ahead of the shoot day.
“I researched enough to know exactly what I was talking about,” Cristin told pop star Kelly Clarkson on her U.S. daytime talk show.
“There used to be this long speech… where I explained the time loop and then when they screened it for people, everyone sort of felt, ‘Well it’s superfluous (information) at this point, we’ve accepted they’re in a time loop, we don’t need to know why’,” she shared.
Noting the monologue was “pages and pages of quantum physics stuff” Milioti said she memorised the dense material.
“I, like, learned enough to know what I was talking about and the minute we wrapped that scene, it (the information) was gone,” she recalled.
But when she saw the finished movie, which broke streaming records on online service Hulu last summer, all the science jargon was gone.
“They cut it,” she groaned, adding: “That happens so often.”