8 Mile's Kim Basinger Shared Lovely Thoughts About Working With Eminem, But I Just Can't Get Over The F-Bomb Related Script Request She Had: ‘F–king Pancakes'

Yahoo

28-04-2025

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In the history of moviemaking there are many, many absurd stories about how and why people got cast (or didn't get cast). I have a feeling 8 Mile would have been a very different movie without Kim Basinger playing the role of Stephanie Smith, the mother to Eminem's character Jimmy in the movie. But if the script had gone just a little bit differently, there's a chance someone else entirely would have occupied the role.
In a wide-ranging interview, Kim Basinger revealed that she actually had a problem with the 8 Mile script when she read it, and it honestly nearly turned her off from the role. Her one request? If they changed one f-bomb-oriented line to another f-bomb-oriented line, she could get behind the character.
I remember reading one line where the mother says, 'Do you want some fucking cereal or some fucking eggs.' And I called Curtis. He picked up the phone, and I didn't even say hello. I just said, 'If you'll change the line to 'fucking pancakes,' I'll do the movie.
Just thinking about what it must have been like to be director Curtis Hanson on the line during that phone call cracks me up. I have no idea if he felt like it was a six-to-one sort of change or if he maybe even thought 'fucking pancakes' sounded way better or way worse. But just the thought of that being a negotiating point amuses me. In the history of wild movie requests, this one definitely stands out as both an unexpected request but also one that was likely relatively easy to fulfill.
It's worth noting Curtis Hanson and Kim Basinger had previously worked together on what some would argue is the "best" detective movie L.A. Confidential before he brought her back into the fold on 8 Mile. She even called him her "dearest friend" in the same interview with Variety. So, she already had a working relationship with the director when she made this script request. But she'd also passed on his movies before, saying no to Wonder Boys a year or two before 8 Mile.
I'm guessing he was confident enough in her intuition, because he gave the change the greenlight, with her giggling about the nature of the request even now, so many years after the movie wrapped. The rest is history, and the movie even went on to win an Academy Award for Best Original song thanks to Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' and it's notable lyrics.
Working as a director on a movie does not sound like it is for the faint of heart. Once on set, though, Ms. Basinger said everyone was a delight, particularly Marshall Mathers, who really went for it in some of the movies tough subject matter scenes.
When Marshall and I started doing these really heavy tough scenes, I remember saying, 'This is only a movie. We're only pretending, but we have to go for it. Let's just go for it. I'm going to say some things and it's going to be horrible and I'm going to keep saying them and they're going to come out of my mouth.' I think we were kind of like two fighters in a ring. To have someone that talented and to have someone that you would have thought had a huge ego, would puff up himself and have an entourage and everything around him, he had some of the nicest people surrounding him that I've ever known. There's nobody in the world like him.
Eminem's 8 Mile had an impact on a whole generation of teens growing up in tough circumstances in struggling cities. (Me, I'm talking about me.) The rapper would go on to return to the Academy Awards in 2020 to pay homage to the song and the movie that lived on, though Hanson didn't live long enough to see it. Despite its resonance, the story behind this request is what will likely leave the most lasting impression on me in the coming years. In fact, one could say I lost myself in the story.