Exclusive: The Creatives Behind '13 Going on 30' Say It Almost Had a Completely Different Ending

Sean Marquette and Christa B. Allen as young Matty and Jenna.

The idea for 13 Going on 30 began with screenwriters Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, who were both turning 30 and found themselves at a crossroads in life. They conveniently ended up at Thanksgiving with their 13-year-old cousins, who were pretty dramatic. Their contrast in perspectives seemed like perfect film fodder, and the process of getting a green light began.

CATHY YUSPA (SCREENWRITER): We both loved the high drama of seemingly unimportant things that can amplify when you're a 13-year-old girl.

JOSH GOLDSMITH (SCREENWRITER): But we wanted to write a movie about an adult character. So we merged those two thoughts and worked our way backward into this high-concept time travel of 13 Going on 30. It was never conceived initially as a body swap movie; it was really about those two periods of life and looking back at your 13-year-old self when you're 30.

GINA MATTHEWS (PRODUCER): Their idea was so visceral to me, because I struggled when I was in junior high.

GOLDSMITH: We knew we wanted Jenna to work in some very glamorous profession, like the fantasy of what you would imagine a kid who's a little bit shallow and into appearances would have done with her life. Based on the original script, she was actually more in fashion than a fashion magazine.

PSA: 13 Going on 30 is streaming on Netflix right now.

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SUSAN ARNOLD (PRODUCER): Once we had the idea, we had to find a director. Gary was not the obvious choice for the studio, but we ended up meeting him for lunch. He said, "I want to elevate the genre of romantic comedy." We were like, "That would be great." So we had to fight for him a little bit.

DONNA ROTH (PRODUCER): Gary really understood the character on a deep level, because he was probably 40 at the time, but he was such a child at heart. He understood the 13 part, he understood the 30 part.

DON BURGESS (CINEMATOGRAPHER): Making movies is such a crapshoot, and there's so many things that can go wrong. But ultimately, the personality of the director really comes through in the film. He was able to keep everybody on the same page.

When it came to casting 13 Going on 30, there was really no question: Jennifer Garner had to be Jenna Rink. But snagging Mark Ruffalo was more of a gamble.

TODD GARNER (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): Our first choice for Jenna Rink was always Jennifer Garner. But she was on the TV show Alias. So we had to wait almost a year for her.

MATTHEWS: Jennifer hadn't been the lead in a big movie yet. She hadn't done "comedy comedy." But she was in Alias and kicking ass.

GOLDSMITH: It was such a brilliant casting of the character because at the time, Jennifer was not nearly as big a star as she is now. She was in Alias and a few movies, but she really was a fresh face and could play that innocence and that wide-eyed wonder and sweetness so well—probably because she wasn't a super-established movie star yet.

BURGESS: Jennifer was absolutely fantastic to work with. She was very smart coming into that project. Within the first week, she knew the name of every crew member on the floor. She went out of her way to treat people well.

MATTHEWS: For the role of Matt, Mark was the dream. I remember when we had our meeting with him, I was so nervous because it had to be him. That depth of that character, that pain was as important as it was for all the comedy and the lovability. I just didn't know that he would ever say "yes." So when he did, it was magic.

Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo as Jenna and Matt.

TERRI TAYLOR (CASTING DIRECTOR): But if it wasn't Mark, the wildly talented and charismatic Paul Rudd or Sam Rockwell, those would be actors at the top of the list.

ARNOLD: Mark almost didn't sign on because we wanted him to dance in the "Thriller" scene, but he did it anyway. He was a reluctant participant, but then he was great.

YUSPA: The fact that they got Mark to be in it just gives the movie so much depth and soul. He's just at the top of the list for us for actors in terms of the vulnerability he brings to the role—and the humor and the work. It really brought the movie to a whole new level.

With the cast set, it was time to, you know, actually make the movie. Jennifer wanted to get into the mindset of a 13-year-old girl for the role. So before filming the sleepover scene in 13 Going on 30, she had a makeshift one of her own.

MATTHEWS: Susan and Donna, two of our producers, had teenage daughters, and Jennifer really wanted to be in that truth. And what better way than to have a sleepover with a bunch of 13-year-old girls?

ARNOLD: Our whole image for the movie was mascara in one hand and a stuffed animal and the other. For Jennifer, we had a sleepover at my house with Donna's daughter, my daughter, and all their friends. They played the Ouija board and she put makeup on all of them.

MATTHEWS: There was a bounce house, they watched movies, listened to music from the '80s and wore their PJs. It was the inspiration for the sleepover scene in the movie.

ARNOLD: I remember coming downstairs in the middle of the night and Jennifer was half-asleep with her glasses all askew, and I took off her glasses and covered her up like she was 13. But that was really great.

Teenage girls played a huge role in the film, both literally and in its inspiration. And getting the mean girls of the movie right was crucial. Arnold and Roth's daughters were originally Six Chicks—one even made the final cut.

MATTHEWS: The Six Chicks represent every single group that we all have seen in junior high.

GOLDSMITH: Everyone who's grown up anywhere at any age, in any decade, has some version of the Six Chicks that they know. And if you don't know them, you probably are a Six Chick.

SUSAN LITTENBERG (EDITOR): Two of the producers' kids were in the Six Chicks: Donna's daughter, Julia and Susan's daughter, Hannah. But Brie Larson was also a Six Chick. Ashley Benson was one of the Six Chicks.

The now-iconic Six Chicks, featuring Brie Larson (far right) and Ashley Benson (directly to the left of Brie).

ROTH: My daughter was one of the Six Chicks.

ARNOLD: My daughter started off being one of the Six Chicks and decided that that career was not for her.

The centerpiece scene of the film—the one people remember most—is the "Thriller" dance scene. It stemmed from Goldsmith, Yuspa, and Matthews' love of the Michael Jackson hit, and it ultimately felt like the ideal choice when they were trying to find a way that Jenna could teach a room full of adults to cut loose. Getting permission to use the song was another task altogether.

JOHN HOULIHAN (MUSIC SUPERVISOR): The way the scene unfolds in the movie, we want it to seem like the waitstaff and the bartenders—the normal people—just got caught up in the spirit of Jenna. We wanted it to feel natural and organic and not too slick. It was so hard to license "Thriller," especially at that time in Michael Jackson's personal life. There was a lot going on legally and pop-culture-wise. So that was a major accomplishment that we were happy to succeed upon because a big iconic song and making a moment like that isn't guaranteed.

When we were auditioning professional dancers for the "Thriller" scene, we started with about 100 people and we'd go through the song, and every time it ended, we would dismiss 10 or 15 people. For this particular scene, we were dismissing the people who were too good-looking, too charismatic, and too professional. The people who normally got hired were scowling at me and walking out of the room all pissed off they didn't get it. The final 15 that we kept for the movie scene were the quirky people, the oddballs, the people who you almost might say you can't even believe they showed up for a professional dance audition, but they did.

The cast and crew the day they shot the "Thriller" scene.

MATTHEWS: I was with Gary when we were auditioning dancers, and I was doing the "Thriller" moves along with the dancers but didn't realize I was doing the moves. Gary said, "You have to be in the dance." And I said, "No way. I'm not." Jennifer was like, "It's in the movie because of your love of the song." So the only time in my career that I ever have done anything in front of the camera was in that "Thriller" scene.

BURGESS: We were in downtown Los Angeles shooting that scene. From a cinematography point of view, it's always fun to do big dance numbers. And certainly, the actors were having a lot of fun with that particular scene. I think one of my older daughters came—she was a huge Michael Jackson fan and she knew that particular dance number, so she was dancing off the sidelines as everybody was doing it for the movie.

JENNIFER GARNER (ACTOR, JENNA): I could still do the "Thriller" dance today. I would need to watch it a couple of times, but yeah, I can still do the "Thriller" dance.

SUSIE DESANTO (COSTUME DESIGNER): When it came to choosing that "Thriller" dress, it was like, "Okay, we need to dress for this party scene." There were options, and that was the dress that got chosen. I don't think you can predict or say, "We are creating this big, cultural moment," which is the dress. I think that happens on its own. People discover it, and it has nothing to do with the Hollywood machine. It gets formed on TikTok. All of a sudden somebody on social media picks it up. It's all within youth culture and what is appealing to them.

GOLDSMITH: There was an Ariana Grande video that came out maybe a year or two ago and that dress became a really popular costume for teenage girls. It's fun and unexpected. It's just so iconic, and I think Jennifer wearing it is what made it famous. It somehow captured everything about that moment, story-wise and character-wise.

Ariana Grande wearing a re-creation of the 13 Going on 30 dress on The Voice.

J. GARNER: I can't believe this dress has taken on a whole life of its own. I did not keep one stitch of clothes from that movie. The dress went back to the warehouse and actually showed up on a background player in Sex and the City at some point. And then it just disappeared. Nobody knows where it is. Somebody has that dress.

The background player in question, who can be seen to the left of Carrie.

DESANTO: We don't even know where the dress is. I cannot tell you how many people get into my DMs all the time, from all different countries all around the world: "Where's this from? How did you find this? I love this movie." That dress was just another costume in the movie at the time we were choosing it. Now, you could buy it on Amazon, you can get millions of knockoffs on Etsy. I can't tell you how many people send me pictures of their 13 Going on 30 "30, flirty, and thriving" 30th birthday parties. It's a phenomenon.

Jennifer Garner and Judy Greer.

"Thriller" wasn't the only song that made the soundtrack to the movie iconic. Tracks from Madonna, Billy Joel, Pat Benatar, and Whitney Houston shaped the plot and soundscape. In retrospect, there are so many hits it almost feels unreal that they all exist in one movie.

GOLDSMITH: We knew it would be an '80s-heavy soundtrack because that obviously was that generation's music.

MATTHEWS: The soundtrack was literally from all of our childhoods. I was obsessed with Rick Springfield and Pat Benatar. So what was really fun is that was the music of our era.

ARNOLD: Donna suggested Billy Joel's "Vienna," and it works so great in the scene where Jenna goes back to her parents' house and cries in the closet.

ROTH: It's one of those songs that carried me through everything. Sometimes you try 30 songs and nothing works, but that one fit right in there. It's like, "Slow down, you crazy child." What happens there in that moment when she's going back, she's taking stock of not just what she wished for but how you navigate your life with the person that you want to be.

LITTENBERG: There's a really great montage that I love when she's getting ready to go to the "Thriller" dance party, and she's in the closet getting ready. Originally, we had such a fantastic song there from the '80s that builds so well. It was Echo & the Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar." I knew we probably wouldn't get that song—and we didn't—but I don't even know if we fought for it. Donna really wanted to have the Whitney Houston song "I Want to Dance With Somebody" there, which of course was huge in the '80s and it works so great in that montage. It just goes to show you sometimes you can put completely different songs under a montage and they both can work great but in a different way.

©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

HOULIHAN: We were very unsure about "I Want to Dance With Somebody" in the scene where Jenna gives herself a makeover because it was so pop. Even though Madonna's "Crazy for You," which plays when Jenna as a 13-year-old is waiting for Matt in a closet and at the end of the movie when she and Matt are adults and are married, was pop, it was a whole other thing than the rest of the movie. But the lyrics were so spot-on for the character. If you notice throughout this movie, we really tried to make every lyric count. "I Want to Dance With Somebody" in the makeup montage was just too perfect that we expanded her genres a little bit to take such a mainstream, R&B pop song like that.

And then, of course, there's "Why Can't I" by Liz Phair. Those of us in the film-music community loved Liz Phair from when she first came onto the scene. It's a phenomenon when songs find their perfect film scene match, which in this case was when Matt is helping Jenna with her Poise photo shoot. It's the energy of a song, and the energy of a scene just exists in these parallel worlds. The feeling was so right for Jennifer's character. The lyrics we used in this movie were very much on purpose, and "Why Can't I" was very helpful for the storytelling and where the character's emotions were at that time.

MATTHEWS: We wanted very iconic classic music—music that was aspirational—and to this day that soundtrack is timeless.

HOULIHAN: I really feel like using iconic songs helped the pedigree of 13 Going on 30 because if they cut our budget in half and took out Billy Joel and "Thriller," it's a different scope of a movie.

Once the movie was shot and in the editing phase, the filmmakers realized they needed to recast the younger versions of Jenna and Matty (the younger Jenna didn't look enough like Jennifer) and reshoot the entire beginning and ending of the movie. As a result, they were able to rethink the film's conclusion. While the final cut features Jen and Matt tying the knot and finally getting their own dream house, there was another ending the filmmakers originally had in mind.

LITTENBERG: There was such a major reshoot that it really changed the film. The opportunity came up to rewrite the entire beginning. Now that we had cut the whole film together, we could see clearly what kind of callbacks we could create in retrospect, to make the story even stronger. There's so many things in the movie now that were not in the original scripts, such as young Jenna dancing the "Thriller" dance in the basement. She didn't dance in the original, so when she dances later, it's a callback. Another callback is when she's looking at Poise, and there's an article that says "30, Flirty, and Thriving," the photos in that article are stills from the set from Jenna Rink's apartment in the film. There's so many little moments that didn't exist before.

GOLDSMITH: If you remember the birthday party in the opening of the movie with the kids, one of the concepts we had originally was that her very embarrassing parents had set up a bounce house in the front yard that was good for an 8-year-old's birthday party, and she's mortified by this. And then our last image of the original script, I believe, was the same thing. They run out of the house as kids and get into the bounce house together — this bounce house she was mortified by—and then as they're bouncing, they become adults and you realize they've stayed together.

MATTHEWS: As the script evolved, we wanted to bring back that dream house. That was how the ending poetically came together. In the end, they got their own dream house.

GOLDSMITH: The idea is exactly the same in that she's gone back to live her life the right way, and by doing that, she and Matt grow up and end up together.

LITTENBERG: When they were trying to figure out how to end the new version, we were brainstorming in the room and I said, "Gary, I've got it. They should just open the door and be married," and "He was like, 'No, no, no. They've got to come out as kids and then become married." And I was like "No, it's going to be so clean. They just run up the stairs and when you cut to the door, they're coming out and rice gets thrown on them—they're married already." Well, obviously, he bought it and that's how the film is.

HOULIHAN: The very final song of the movie is a reprise of Madonna's "Crazy for You," and it really works, but that was a last-minute idea. We had Queen's "You're My Best Friend" as the final song when they burst out the door, and then at the end we realized, "Wait a minute, it's their song when they kiss, and we might as well just let that blossom." Since it was the end, we wanted to make it an uplifting, big moment. So I pitched Gary the idea of having our composer overlay a 60-piece orchestra on top of Madonna. It's a great happy ending for the 30-year-old versions of the characters to be listening to the music they listened to at 13.

©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Needless to say, the movie was a major hit. It made nearly $100 million at the box office but, more importantly, became a sleepover staple for an entire generation. People have been dying for a sequel for years, and while that doesn't seem likely, there is a stage musical version in the works.

ARNOLD: We talked to Jennifer about a sequel or a reboot. We had a couple other projects with Jennifer that ended up not ending up happening. But we didn't really talk about a movie. it would have to be 15 Going on 50, I guess? Or 14 Going on 40? We would, of course, love to, but it's hard to do without Gary.

ROTH: We thought about TV. One of the hard parts about it is, how do you sustain it if you did it on television? There's a lot to unpack there, but it would be great.

GOLDSMITH: I'd want to know where's Judy Greer's character? Is Lucy still running Sparkle? I don't know, maybe Matt and Jenna live in New Jersey around where Cathy grew up. I'm gonna say they live in New Jersey, and they're very happy and fully self-actualized.

YUSPA: They have kids dealing with their own problems.

ARNOLD: I think they're in that pink house, but they might have painted it because...it's pink.

The movie has only grown in popularity as the years have gone by. And for the people who worked on it, 13 Going on 30 is still one of the things they get asked about the most.

J. GARNER: We were so little when we shot that movie. The entire movie, I feel like, is just recentered in the zeitgeist over the past couple of years. I've seen both Judy Greer and Mark Ruffalo recently and we talk about it every time we see each other, like, "Are you hearing more about 13 Going on 30 than when it came out all those years ago?" And the answer is yes.

MATTHEWS: In its essence and in its heart, the movie was always about this theme: Be careful of the choices you make in your life because you might not like where you end up. That was always at the heart. That's why it still resonates with people, because we never wanted to make a parody. Even though it's a big, fun comedy, we always had, in our hearts, the vision that it would still feel very relatable, grounded and real.

DESANTO: It is the perfect movie, to be honest with you. Jen and I have talked about it. We're always like, "Who knew? Can you believe it? Here we are." We didn't have any idea that we were creating this cultural moment that would have this long, reaching appeal for so many people.

LITTENBERG: People have come up to me and said, "You worked on 13 Going on 30? That's one of my favorite movies." People cry sometimes. Not just women—men love this movie as well, and I think that's a real testament to Mark Ruffalo being a very natural rom-com guy, as opposed to some dashing, plastic sort of main lead.

DESANTO: People always ask Jennifer about the movie. Even at her 50th birthday party, she had T-shirts made that were like "13 Going on 50." And she had this adorable picture of herself when she was 13. What it ultimately is about is somebody who's being true to themselves.

MATTHEWS: For my daughter's 13th birthday, she wanted to have a 13 Going on 30 birthday party. So we had a full-on 13 Going on 30 party, and Jennifer sent a text to her. It makes me still cry just thinking about it.

T. GARNER: When I was having my daughter 16 years ago, my wife was literally in the middle of giving birth, and a nurse leaned into me and said, "I have to tell you, 13 Going on 30 is my favorite movie."