Rosario Dawson teases Clerks III and what could have been in abandoned script
Kevin Smith previously revealed that his first draft took place around Hurricane Sandy
Rosario Dawson is the queen of the multiverse: she’s a figure in the MCU, Star Wars, and the View Askewniverse. With Clerks III premiering imminently, the actor admits to The Hollywood Reporter that the new film had her “ugly crying”—but it was almost an entirely different story.
“Kevin [Smith] had a version of the [Clerks III] script floating around. He had written it a few years ago, but it ended up not happening, which was devastating,” she recalls. “And then he had a widowmaker heart attack; we almost lost him. And then a year later, to the date, he commenced filming on Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which I got to be part of. So just to get back with him and the gang again was so, so special.”
Smith has spoken of the first draft of Clerks III, telling THR it took place during Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed the Quick Stop with flooding. Randal had a nervous breakdown and decided to start queuing for the new Ranger Danger film a year in advance, which kickstarted a “weird movement.” “A village sprouts up in the parking lot of the movie theater. Randal builds a lean-to version of Quick Stop, like a bodega-shanty version, and becomes the unofficial mayor of this town. It was a movie about dealing with grief,” Smith explained. “It was so far-flung from Clerks. Mercifully, we never made it. And then suddenly, I had the heart attack and was like, oh, that would be a good backbone for this movie.”
For her part, Dawson says the filmmaker “brought Becky back in a very controversial way, which is not shocking for Kevin, of course.” She continued, “But it was heartbreaking, and it also just felt really special and important and magical. I love that this character became so important over so many years that being brought up to date on the state of things could immediately have such an impact on the storytelling of this film.”
Dawson claims the new Clerks is a “perfect amalgamation of” the previous two films, calling it “poignant” and “emotional” but “still just as funny and irreverent and all of those wonderful things.” She adds, “It also has a lot of humanity to it. So Kevin really delivers, as he has all these years, and it’s why he’s made such an impact on this industry. Only Kevin could make such a self-referential film and get away with it.”