Seth Rogen: Anne Hathaway quit Knocked Up over baby crowning scene

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Seth Rogen has confirmed the reason Anne Hathaway quit Knocked Up and was replaced by Katherine Heigl — at least how he remembers it.

Knocked Up is a much-loved 2007 romcom in which Katherine Heigl’s character becomes pregnant following a one-night stand with Seth Rogen’s slacker stoner character. Originally, Katherine Heigl’s character, the ambitious Los Angeles reporter Alison Scott, was played by The Devil Wears Prada star Anne Hathaway, but she dropped out.

Speaking on The A24 Podcast , Rogen said Hathaway quit the movie because of the crowning scene, which sees Scott give birth.

“Yeah, I mean… it could have been a hundred million things. That was what I remember being told,” Rogen said. “She didn’t want the crowning of the baby to be visually representative, which I respect.

"There was no confusion. After it happened in the movie no-one was like... because it was a baby coming out of it. And so, no level... Daniel Day Lewis wouldn't do that! That's a level of acting that... It’s obviously not real.

"We had started rehearsing the movie… and part of me was just... maybe she was just like, ‘I don’t know if this is for me.’ I don’t know. I will take what she said at face value, which was the crowning.”

"And history will tell… she has been right about a lot more things than I have over the years! So I think she was probably right. She knew what was right for her, yes. And then Heigl was great. Katie Heigl was great.”

Hathaway herself has mentioned this in the past. In 2008, she told Marie Claire magazine she turned down the part "because it was going to show a vagina — not mine, but somebody else's — and I didn't believe that it was actually necessary to the story."

As Rogan suggests, Knocked Up wouldn't have featured Hathaway’s own nudity, rather the nudity of someone else in a scene. But Hathaway has also countered the suggestion she has a squeaky clean image, saying in profile interviews that she has no problem going topless on-camera (she did so in both Havoc and Brokeback Mountain before Knocked Up came out).

“I don’t actively search for [films] that I can get naked in,’ she told Marie Claire. “But nor is it something that I would ever not do a job because of. It is what it is. Some people choose not to do it on moral grounds; I think that’s a shoddy argument.”

Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.