Dominique Swain and Marisa Coughlan on the 'Pumpkin' Experience
Being cast in a movie that pokes fun of sorority life may sound like every non-sorority girl's dream come true, but what happens when the exact life you're making fun of is the same life you once lived? If you are actress Marisa Coughlan ("Super Troopers," "Teaching Mrs. Tingle") you try to hide your past the best you can.
"I was a sister in USC's Pi Beta Phi," Coughlan says sheepishly. "I never tell anyone about that though. In fact, when we started shooting "Pumpkin" the last thing I wanted everyone to know was that I lived in the very same sorority houses we were making fun of."
"It was so funny," adds Dominique Swain, Coughlan's co-star. "She like lived in the house across the street."
Filmed at the University of Southern California, United Artists' "Pumpkin" reunited Coughlan with a life she thought she had left far behind while opening Swain's eyes to the sorority world. In the film, both Coughlan and Swain play sorority sisters in Alpha Omega Pi, a sorority sick of always being runner up to the Tri-Omegas for Sorority of the Year. Determined to finally beat their archrivals, the girls decide to coach mentally and physically handicapped athletes for their charity of the year. Their plan to impress the Greek Council though quickly goes awry when their fellow sorority sister Carolyn (Christina Ricci) ends up falling in love with her assigned athlete, played by Hank Harris.
Although Coughlan could obviously relate to her character, perky sorority president Julie Thurber, the former Pi Phi sister pretended not to know a thing about sorority life in order to impress fellow co-star Christina Ricci. However, Coughlan's deep dark secret eventually came out, and in front of the very person she didn't want to know.
"I was in the make-up chair outside one of the houses with Christina," Coughlan recalls, "when this girl comes out of nowhere and starts talking about how we rushed together. So I had to acknowledge that I went there and was in a sorority much to my chagrin. When I was a student though it was either live in a sorority house and have dinners made for you and a maid to pick up after you, or live in apartment by yourself in the middle of the ghetto. By my junior year all my best friends were moving in sorority houses themselves, so I just tagged along. USC's not exactly located in the best neighborhood, and I didn't want to room with some complete stranger."
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