Mandy Moore is looking back on one of the more memorable experiences from her early Hollywood years, revealing that Macaulay Culkin helped introduce her and several of her young co-stars to alcohol while they were filming the 2004 cult comedy Saved! in Canada.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Shut Up Evan podcast, Moore recalled shooting the satirical teen comedy in Vancouver in 2003, when she was 18. Because the legal drinking age in British Columbia is 19, Moore and much of the cast were technically underage. Culkin, who was older than many of his castmates, became the group's unofficial guide to nightlife and drinks.
Moore said Culkin introduced her, Jena Malone, Patrick Fugit, and Eva Amurri, to drinking White Russians during production. The actress admitted there was “a little bit of underage drinking” during filming, joking that the creamy cocktail immediately appealed to her.
“Milk and alcohol? This is made for me,” Moore recalled thinking. “I love this! This is like ice cream, this is fantastic!”
The memories came up as Moore reflected on making Saved!, a film that has since become a cult favorite. Released in 2004, the comedy starred Malone as a Christian high school student whose life spirals after an attempt to “save” her boyfriend from being gay results in an unexpected pregnancy.
Moore played the film’s outspoken and self-righteous antagonist, Hilary Faye Stockard, while Culkin portrayed her sarcastic, wheelchair-using brother Roland. The movie was filmed in British Columbia despite being set at a fictional Christian school near Baltimore.
For Moore, the project arrived at a pivotal point in her career. Fresh off roles in The Princess Diaries and A Walk to Remember, she was eager to take on something different.
She described joining a cast of rising young actors as feeling like “summer camp” and said she quickly bonded with the group. “I felt like a cool kid,” Moore said, adding that she admired being surrounded by performers she viewed as part of a new generation of exciting Hollywood talent.
Despite the drinking stories, Moore emphasized that the cast wasn't getting into serious trouble. Instead, she remembers a group of teenagers behaving exactly like teenagers.
One of her strongest memories involved the cast tossing giant marshmallows off a balcony at unsuspecting people below. “We were kids,” she said. “We weren’t really getting up to no good.”
