While reminiscing about making ‘E.T.,’ Dee Wallace recalled a B-story about the extra-terrestrial having a crush on her character — and having to remind Steven Spielberg that they were making ‘a family film.’ https://t.co/jt5cQKqJ6y
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) May 3, 2025
“[Originally, there was] a whole B-story in E.T. about E.T. having a love affair with Mary — a love ‘crush’ on Mary,” she recalled. “There’s little bits of it left in there. There was a scene where he came in to put Reese’s Pieces down on my bedside table as I’m asleep. Well, Mr. Spielberg wanted the sheet a little lower than I was comfortable with.”
She continued, “I argued my point that this was a family film. I could understand the parents smoking pot in Poltergeist,” she added, referencing the film that Spielberg had made at around the same time as producer. “But this film was very pure to me. And it was about love. And so we ended up calling in [producer] Kathleen Kennedy and [writer] Melissa [Mathison], our beautiful, amazing writer, and they said, ‘We kind of agree with her, Steven.’
“So we compromised,” Wallace concluded, “and pulled the sheet up almost to my shoulder blades, which I was okay with.”
