Dee Wallace “argued” with Steven Spielberg over ‘ET’ “love affair” subplot with Elliot’s mother
ET star Dee Wallace has said she “argued” with Steven Spielberg to cut a subplot from the 1982 movie where the titular alien had a love affair with her character.
The actor, who played Elliot’s mother in the film, claimed during a recent appearance on the Still Here Hollywood podcast that there was an original subplot where ET had an affair with her, but she campaigned to have it cut from the final edit in order to keep the movie family-friendly.
She said: “There’s a whole B story in ET about ET having a love affair with Mary, a love crush on Mary. And there’s little bits of it left in there.”
Wallace explained: “There was a scene where he came in to put Reese’s Pieces down on my bedside table as I’m asleep. Well, Spielberg wanted the sheet a little lower than I was comfortable with.”
However, voicing her opinion to the Hollywood director, the actor recalled: “I argued my point that this was a family film,” and that the alien character was “very pure” in her view, so it shouldn’t venture into adult themes.
She then enlisted the help of two of the film’s production team, writer Melissa Mathison and producer Kathleen Kennedy, to rework the scene into something more appropriate for its audience, as Wallace noted: “So we compromised and pulled the sheet up almost to my shoulder blades, which I was OK with.”
Upon its release 43 years ago, ET won four Oscars for ‘Best Sound’, ‘Best Original Score’, ‘Best Visual Effects’, and ‘Best Sound Effects Editing’.
For Spielberg, the film became one of his greatest filmmaking efforts, with it being admitted to the United States National Film Registry for the Library of Congress in 2022 in recognition of its 40th anniversary.
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