Way before a pen was even put to paper for Mean Girls, Bring It On was the chick-flick cult classic.
“I’m sexy, I’m cute! I’m popular to boot!” would have many young people who lived through the Y2K era chime in with the rest of the song, eventually getting to the lyrics: “I’m major, I roar! I swear I’m not a whore!”
And, according to Gabrielle Union, who played The Clovers head cheerleader, the casual use of the word ‘whore’ was far from the most shocking thing about the 2000 blockbuster.
Union has shared a morally questionable secret on TikTok from the making of Bring It On.
“Story time!” Union begins the clip, while showing snippets of The Clovers squad.
“So, we shot these snippets that you see here after the movie wrapped, because once test-audiences saw the movie they wanted more of the Clovers,” she says as more clips of herself and her co-stars of colour pop up in the background.
“We shot these [scenes] only for the trailer, not for the movie, to make people think we were in the movie more than we were. The end,” shared Union.
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@gabunion Fun Facts 🙃 #bringiton #clovers #tiktokpartner ♬ original sound – Gab Union
In an interview from September 2021, Union discussed the way that race was portrayed in the movie. Speaking of a scene where Union’s character, Isis, confronted Dunst character, Torrance, about stealing their routine, The Clovers representative says she wished Isis was able to take a stronger stance.
“A young Black girl should have said, ‘Yeah you stole our routines and when you were forced to come up with your own, you weren’t good enough. But I didn’t give her a full voice,” she said.
“I have to acknowledge and be accountable for letting [Isis] down and letting myself down and letting down the audience,” she later added. “I wanted to make her acceptable and all of the things I thought she needed to be to be a respectable Black leader. It’s the constant shape shifting to appeal to folks’ comfort that never even considered yours.”
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Take a trip down memory lane and watch the trailer to Bring It On:
