Get Ready To Learn Something New Today With These Random But Interesting 2000s Pop Culture Facts
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1.Anne Hathaway was actually the ninth choice to play Andy in The Devil Wears Prada.
Anne made the revelation on an episode of Season 13 of RuPaul's Drag Race.
2.NSYNC's Joey Fatone, JC Chasez, and Chris Kirkpatrick filmed two cameo scenes for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, where they played Jedi extras. According to Fatone, the band was asked to do the cameo because the daughters of George Lucas and the film's producer, Rick McCallum, were fans of the band.
However, their scenes were ultimately cut from the movie, probably likely due to the backlash it got online when the rumor leaked that they were doing cameos.
The news of their cameo was even parodied on SNL, with that week's host, Josh Hartnett, playing JC Chasez.
3.There is probably a good chance you owned or knew someone who owned Finding Nemo on DVD in the '00s because it's the biggest-selling DVD of all time.
It actually broke the record within its first two weeks of release (when it sold 15 million copies!).
4.The singing hamster things in the Quiznos commercials are actually called "spongemonkeys" and they pre-date the commercials.
They were created by British animator, Joel Veitch, who put them in a video where they sang about loving things like the moon and cheese on his website, Rathergood. An ad agency working with Quiznos saw the video and thought they would make great mascots for a new campaign.
5.Mike Myers originally recorded all his dialogue for Shrek in his normal accent, but after seeing a rough cut of the movie he asked DreamWorks CEO and the film's producer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, if he could re-record his lines with a Scottish accent.
Katzenberg agreed after hearing him do an alternative take. The re-record and reanimation cost the studio an extra $4 million dollars.
6.The iPod's name was inspired by the iconic 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
According to Vinnie Chieco — who was the copywriter at Apple that came up with the name — when he saw the original iPod for the first time, he immediately thought of 2001 and the line, "Open the pod bay door, Hal!" They then just added the 'i' prefix to it.
Coincidentally, the iPod was released in the same year that the film takes place: 2001.
7.After the HUGE success of The Dark Knight, rumors circulated that Cher was the top choice to play Catwoman in the next sequel. Now, neither Christopher Nolan, Cher, nor the studio ever confirmed this or said anything about it, yet the rumor really took off. Eventually, Cher did address it on Ellen, laughing it off and saying she was, "Too old to be Catwoman," and added, "I could be Grandma Catwoman or something."
But, this wasn't the first time Cher was speculated to play Catwoman. When 1992's Batman Returns was still in development rumors circulated that she wanted to play the role.
8.Christina Aguilera's iconic intro line, "Don’t look at me," on "Beautiful" was never meant to be part of the song.
Christina whispered the line after her friend walked into the studio while she was recording her vocals for the song. Also, the song was recorded all in one take.
9.Jimmy Kimmel Live! has "live" as part of its name because during its first year, the show aired live (in order to be able to have the most up-to-date jokes). Because the show taped late live on the West Coast (9:00 p.m. so it could air at 12:00 a.m. EST), both the guests and the audience were served alcohol.
After a year the show stopped airing live in order to help with any unexpected censoring. They also stopped serving alcohol after an audience member vomited in the seats.
10.Songwriters Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis originally offered "Can't Get You Out of My Head" to UK pop group S Club 7 and to Sophie Ellis-Bextor, but they both turned it down. They then offered it to Kylie Minogue.
In the case of S Club 7, it was actually their manager, Simon Fuller, who turned the track down.
11.When Jennifer Lopez launched her perfume Glow in 2002, it was predicted to be a failure, but it actually went on to be one of the biggest-selling fragrances ever. The reason why it was assumed it would fail was that — with the exception of Elizabeth Taylor (who had numerous very successful perfumes) — no celebrity had ever launched a successful fragrance line.
The success of Glow would open the door for lots and lots of celebrities to launch fragrance lines in the '00s and beyond.
12.Spider-Man 3's writer-director, Sam Raimi, was very unhappy with how the film turned out and was planning on making a fourth film to make up for it, and to also end the franchise on a high note.
Unfortunately, Raimi could not get the script together in time and Sony decided to just reboot the films (the ones with Andrew Garfield as the lead, FTR). And, I think after seeing No Way Home, we would all be happy to see both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield get another film.
13.The novelty-colored ketchup of the early '00s has become a pretty iconic Y2K product. Most people remember the purple being the first color out, however the green color was released first in 2000, followed by the purple a year later in 2001. Also, the ketchups were actually incredibly popular.
They did however lose popularity by the mid-'00s, which is why Heinz discontinued them.
14.Paris and Nicky Hilton flaked on doing a cameo in Sex and the City. The two were supposed to play Samantha's neighbors in the Meatpacking District.
According to Nicky, she and Paris were in LA and never got on the flight they were supposed to be on to get to the shoot in New York. The two were then too scared to call and say they wouldn't be there.
Nicky recently revealed that it's one of her biggest regrets because she was "obsessed" with the show.
15.The iPhone was not the first phone with a capacitive touch-screen, it was actually a Prada (yes, as in the design house Prada) phone released in collaboration with LG. The phone was released in January 2007, and, in fact, a few days before Steve Jobs would announce the iPhone.
As this GQ article points out, designers releasing cell phones were a thing in the '00s — most notably Kimora Lee Simmons’s Baby Phat phone with Motorola, and Versace's gold flip phone with Nokia.
16.RuPaul's Drag Race is one of the most popular and beloved shows on TV, however, before its 2009 premiere on Logo, the series had been turned down by both Bravo and E!. The networks felt they couldn't do a show about drag.
In fact, it actually took World of Wonder some convincing to get Ru on board, who felt reality competition shows were too mean-spirited.
17.It's hard to think of anyone else singing on Fat Joe's "What's Luv?" other than Ashanti. But, according to him, his label boss, Irv Gotti, wanted to replace her with J.Lo so they could market the song to the Latino market.
Ashanti originally sang the vocals on the demo for the song and Fat Joe thought she sounded "amazing" on it, and he knew there was no reason to replace her with J.Lo. By the way, Ashanti only learned about this almost happening last year!
18.Artist Takashi Murakami's collaboration with Louis Vuitton is iconically '00s (particularly early '00s). However, the collaboration between the two actually spanned for over a decade, and was phased out in 2015.
Murakami was actually not the first artist to collab with Louis Vuitton to recreate its monogram, it was actually Stephen Sprouse. After Sprouse's 2001 collab was met with success it convinced Louis Vuitton that it was okay to allow artists to reinterpret the monogram and that it wouldn't hurt the brand.
19.Contrary to what everybody remembers, Britney Spears is not wearing a nude/sheer body suit with rhinestones on it in her "Toxic" music video, it's actually her body with the stones directly glued onto her skin.
Britney revealed this during a 2016 interview with UK talk show host Jonathan Ross.
20.And lastly, yes, Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix and turned it down. However it wasn't that the video rental chain was looking to purchase it, Netflix was in financial troubles and hoping that Blockbuster would buy them out.
In Netflix's co-founder Marc Randolph's book, That Will Never Work, he says that the company had for months tried to get a meeting with Blockbuster in the hopes that they would buy them because they weren't profitable. They eventually got a very last-minute meeting with them in September of 2000, and Netflix laid out how they could be an asset to Blockbuster (running their online DVD rental market, while Blockbuster continued to expand the brick-and-mortar market).
Randolph went on to say that when they told them it would cost $50 million to buy Netflix, the then-Blockbuster CEO, John Antioco, was "struggling not to laugh," and did not take them seriously (not even making a counteroffer). While this all seems like a completely dumb decision today, it actually made sense at the time, the dot-com crash had just happened and internet companies were thought of as risky investments.
