The Curious Case Of Susan May Pratt

For those who grew up loving 10 Things I Hate About You, Drive Me Crazy, or Center Stage, Susan May Pratt needs no introduction.

For those who didn't, she played Julia Stiles’ Shakespeare-obsessed best friend in the 1999 Taming of the Shrew–inspired comedy, then she was Melissa Joan Hart’s scheming frenemy in the 1999 movie that introduced us to Adrian Grenier, and she was also “the best goddamn dancer” in the 2000 ballet drama.

Although none of those films were massive commercial successes — 10 Things made $38 million while Drive Me Crazy and Center Stage both topped out around $17 million — many children of the ’90s connected deeply to at least one of them. And to that curated collective, Pratt is as iconic and important as Heath Ledger, Britney Spears, or Jamiroquai’s "Canned Heat."

But starring in back-to-back-to-back cult favorites didn’t translate into more work for Pratt. “Center Stage changed my life. It was the first time that strangers on the street recognized and approached me. But it didn't, unfortunately, as you know, change my career that much,” she told BuzzFeed News during a recent candid phone interview. “It didn't do that well and it didn't actually give me any other opportunities.”

Pratt in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Touchstone Pictures

After the release of Nicholas Hytner’s acclaimed ballet drama, Pratt went on to earn guest-starring roles on TV shows (like Charmed and Mad Men) and bit parts in independent films (like 2002's Searching for Paradise opposite Chris Noth, and 2003's Undermind), but none of those jobs helped her move further up the Hollywood ladder. “It's kind of disappointing to have one's career peak in your mid-twenties and have it be a downhill slide since,” she said with a laugh. “[It’s] been hard for me in the last 15 years that my career has not progressed.”

But acting was not a profession Pratt spent her childhood dreaming of — a fact that takes a bit of the sting out for the now 41-year-old mother of two. Pratt left school at 16 to pursue modeling in Milan before heading to college in New York, where agents began sending her out for commercials, which quickly led to film and television auditions. “I was kind of really lost at that point," Pratt said. "I didn't know what I wanted. So I was like, OK, let's try this!”

She scored her first acting role in a 1998 episode of Law & Order and then put college on hold after being cast as Mandella in 10 Things. “The cast was all really young — like me and Gabrielle Union were the grandmas in the cast because we were in our mid-twenties and the rest of them were literally teenagers,” Pratt recalled of her co-stars Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, and a then-unknown (at least in America) Heath Ledger. The young cast, she said, would have massive dinners every night.

Pratt in Drive Me Crazy.

Twentieth Century Fox

The original DNA for Mandella was drastically different than what made the final cut of the film, Pratt said. “Mandella was a really dark character in the first few incarnations of the script. She was very much trying to kill herself so she could join Shakespeare in heaven,” the actor revealed, noting there was a scene in which Mandella furiously scratched at her wrists with the edges of a spiral-bound notebook. “There was also this scene — You know Isadora Duncan? She was a dancer and she was in a convertible and she flung her scarf around her neck and it got wrapped around the wheel and she was decapitated. Well, Mandella would do weird things like that. She'd get into a convertible and fling her scarf around her neck or dangle it off the side.”

But at the first table read, director Gil Junger noticed how disturbing Mandella's scenes were and set out to soften the character, and by extension, the film. “I remember I was sitting next to Gil at the table read and the only note on his notebook was, ‘Cut Mandella,’” Pratt recalled, with a chuckle. “I was like, Aww. That's harsh. … I didn't have any perspective on the business or anything. I didn't get it yet.”

Now, she said, “I can see why they cut [those dark scenes]. … That wasn't that movie and it wouldn't have made the money it did if all that was in the movie.”

A less troublesome Mandella made