Like “A Christmas Story” and “Home Alone,” “Elf” is one of those Christmas comedies that’s nearly impossible to ignore during the holidays, and for good reason. The fantasy comedy directed by Jon Favreau is still very funny more than two decades after its theatrical release. After all, where else will you learn not to eat gum on the street? At the center of the syrup-infused spaghetti, fake Santa fights, and stuffing 11 cookies into the VCR is a Will Ferrell performance that’s spirited and so authentic you can’t help but root for Buddy. It also helps that “Elf” features a supporting cast with Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen and the great James Caan. Among them is Zooey Deschanel as Jovie, the department store employee Buddy falls in love with. Everyone knows Deschanel now for “500 Days of Summer” and seven seasons of “New Girl,” but “Elf” really put her in the spotlight. Although there is an alternate universe where Buddy is ice skating at Rockefeller Center with someone else.
During an interview with the Call Her Daddy podcast, Deschanel revealed that the role of Jovie initially went to Katie Holmes. But after dropping out of college, his not-quite audition charmed Favreau enough to give him the role:
“When you’re an actor, you start auditioning, you get nervous and you get angry. I wasn’t nervous at all because I was like, I’m not going to get the part. So it was pretty great because I wasn’t nervous. Then when she had a scheduling conflict, she was like, ‘Who should we get?’ I think the character was worked on by the person playing it and they knew I sang because I had a cabaret act where I did jazz standards and stuff, so it worked with the character.”
Zooey Deschanel got the role after Katie Holmes dropped out
Katie Holmes, who would later play Rachel Dawes in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” was working on “Dawson’s Creek,” in addition to starring in Joel Schumacher’s “Phone Booth.” Around the same time, Deschanel had begun making appearances on the big screen in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” and Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Big Trouble.” Ironically, Holmes and Deschanel would star together in the 2002 psychological thriller “Abandonment.” To say that one actor would have been better than the other is conjecture because we cannot Really I know this for sure, but Jovie certainly would have been a very different character.
Deschanel’s Jovie puts up her walls at work, as she initially converses with Buddy in a slightly deadpan manner. Anyone who works in retail during the stressful holiday season can attest that socializing is on the back burner until it’s absolutely necessary. In Jovie’s case, being surrounded by the living personification of the Christmas spirit in the middle of one of New York’s largest shopping malls would also cause me to withdraw into myself. But the problem with her character is that she is not an inherently cold person.
Jovie warms up to Buddy because he is a kind presence who genuinely shows an interest in her singing voice. When a smile appears, it means something. Deschanel and Ferrell are the right kind of opposites to see why they end up falling for each other. Again, it’s hard to say whether Holmes would have shared the same chemistry. But given that “Elf” has become a holiday staple, it would be like trying to imagine anyone other than Bonnie Bedelia in “Die Hard” or Lauren Graham in “Bad Santa.”
“Elf” is currently streaming on HBO Max.
