25 years ago, Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire opened in theaters nationwide. The sports-romantic-dramedy was a massive commercial and critical hit, launching its core cast to the next levels of stardom. Tom Cruise received his second Oscar nomination for his performance, and Renée Zellweger became a bona-fide A-lister overnight thanks to her charming romantic turn. Meanwhile, young Jonathan Lipnicki landed the main human role in the Stuart Little series off the back of his winsome appearance, and Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Academy Award for his magnetic supporting role (and delivered one of the most memorable Oscar speeches in the process).
Their co-star Diana Jordan hoped the movie would be a turning point in her career, too. She’d always dreamed of being a Hollywood star, and after years of touring stand-up venues across the United States and abroad, she’d finally arrived to witness the fruits of her labor at the movie’s premiere. In the late 1970s, Jordan had attended improv classes with––and briefly dated––Robin Williams, whose rapid ascension from stand-up favorite to sitcom superstar provided a career model that Jordan hoped to parallel. “All of a sudden, comedians were getting all of these sitcoms, and it was just blowing up,” she says, “and I thought the way to get seen, other than going into a casting office, is to be seen on stage.” She was right, as a Showtime comedy special caught the attention of Crowe’s mother, Alice, who urged her son to cast Jordan in his next movie. And once the network executives saw her performance at the Jerry Maguire premiere, she’d be overwhelmed with sitcom offers and more supporting movie roles, right? “I’m gonna come out of this movie and everyone’s gonna say, ‘Oh, you were so great, you were so good, you should have your own sitcom!’,” she says. “That’s in my mind, of course, what’s gonna happen, ‘cuz I knew what I’d done for five or six weeks.”
Jordan was restless with anticipation as she finally sat down for the screening, repeatedly whispering “Get ready, get ready” to her date, a fellow actor. She was a little confused when her first big scene didn’t play, but remained hopeful nonetheless. “No, wait, there’s this one coming up, and I really did some really good stuff here, get ready,” she whispered. But again, no dice. By the end of the film, Jordan could count her lines on one hand, despite shooting her part for over a month. She was visibly and audibly devastated as the credits rolled, and her date shook his head, disappointedly exhaled, and muttered, “Fuckin’ show business.”
Crowe originally selected Jordan for the role of Laurel Boyd, the sister and housemate of Jerry’s love interest, Dorothy. It’s probably the fifth-biggest part in the movie, after sports agent Jerry (Cruise), Dorothy (Zellweger), her son Ray (Lipnicki), and football star Rod Tidwell (Gooding Jr.). Crowe’s first choice for Laurel was Bonnie Hunt, who passed on the role––until the studio offered to increase her salary and she gladly reclaimed the part, bumping Jordan down the call sheet.
Crowe kept Jordan aboard to play the leader of the divorced women’s group, a recurring set of characters who hang out at the Boyds’ house. Her new part was smaller than her original role, but still could have been a standout character nonetheless. “I don’t care, I just wanna be in the movie,” she remembers thinking.
Laurel wasn’t the only role that Crowe recast at the eleventh hour. Jordan recalls that the film began production with a different young actor playing Ray, who was “scared to death” of Tom Cruise––a dynamic that didn’t work at all for the character whose defining traits are sweetness and warmth. Jordan was nonetheless surprised when Lipnicki arrived on set, and asked the director, “What happened to Ray?”, to which he responded, “Ray is no more.” Jordan says that Lipnicki delivered a sweeter, more enthusiastic performance because the producers showed him Top Gun on VHS, which gave him a different perspective on his costar: “He thinks Tom Cruise is Maverick, that he flies airplanes. He doesn’t need to know that he’s a movie star.”
Jordan asserts that the casting team “did the right thing” by replacing the original actor, who “didn’t have it.”
Yet Ray’s recasting might have led to Jordan’s doom. The comedian believes that Lipnicki’s charming chemistry with Cruise shifted the focus of the entire film away from the divorced women’s group and toward the Jerry-Ray dynamic. “They had no idea that Tom was gonna have the relationship with the little boy that he had,” she explains. “If that other little crappy boy had stayed in the movie, maybe I’d’ve had more.”
Jordan approached Crowe after the screening and tearfully thanked him for the opportunity. She says that the director broke down and apologized for reducing her part so dramatically. “He said, ‘You were so fantastic, you were so awesome,’ I mean, ‘cause this is the kinda person he is, right?’ she recalls with bittersweetness. Crowe gave Jordan some of her outtake footage as consolation, and she also thinks she receives more residuals than many of her costars because he felt so guilty: “I think Cameron might have given me a little extra,” she theorizes.
Jordan never did another movie after Jerry Maguire, instead focusing her efforts on live comedy––and after developing breast cancer in 2010, she pivoted toward motivational public speaking. The pandemic upended her livelihood, forcing her to do stand-up on Zoom (which she describes as “a nightmare”) and live off of unemployment and Jerry Maguire residuals. The silver lining: so many people watched the movie during lockdown that her royalties temporarily quadrupled from the previous year.
Despite Jordan’s disappointment with the size of her role, she has nothing but praise for the completed film. “It’s just a brilliant movie. Brilliantly cast, directed…and edited. The editing is…” She pauses, and corrects herself. “Except in my case, it is really beautifully edited.” She holds the movie’s core team in high regard, describing Cruise as “incredibly gracious,” Zellweger as “a nice person,” and Crowe as a “good friend.”
But Jordan inadvertently got a sliver of revenge by accidentally worsening one of the film’s most iconic scenes. In the climactic reunion between Jerry and Dorothy (best known as the origin of both, “You complete me” and “You had me at hello”), Jordan is seated on a couch, closely positioned to Cruise for the duration of the scene. She recalls shooting the scene at least 15 times, with Cruise giving slightly different line deliveries (and, bizarrely, wearing a different pair of tennis shoes) on each distinct take. Jordan says the best take was the only one where Cruise visibly cried as he spoke––and that she ruined the scene by crying along with him. “Cruise started to cry, and I started to cry, and everybody else was starting to get emotional, you could see it,” she explains. “So then when Tom goes around and leaves, Cameron goes, ‘Oh Diana, you can’t cry, you’re not supposed to like him!” and all the other women go, ‘Well it was so romantic!’ and now everybody’s crying.” She laughs. “Just imagine this. Imagine he’s crying. Imagine, as he’s saying “It meant nothing,” tears start roll—or just ONE tear starts rolling. I mean, he would’ve won the Oscar! So you know the girl that caused Tom Cruise not to get the Oscar.”