Brittany Snow cast in ‘Hairspray’ thanks to psychic’s prediction

There’s manifesting and then there’s manifesting.

Even though she admits she “bombed” her audition for the Hairspray film adaptation, star Brittany Snow credits a psychic’s eerily prescient prediction with her ultimately getting the part of Amber Von Tussle in the movie.

Snow opened up about the experience in the latest episode of Owen Thiele’s podcast In Your Dreams. In it, Thiele asked her how she got the role alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, who played her mother, Velma Von Tussle, in the 2007 musical film.

Snow explained that she and a friend, whose identity is bleeped out in the podcast, went to see a psychic. This friend went in first, and was told she’d get a divorce, and left the room crying. This didn’t instill much confidence in Snow, who joked that she assumed the psychic would then tell her, she’s “gonna die, probably.”

Instead, she said, “The lady goes, ‘In two years, you are going to get a big break that kind of starts your career and you’re gonna play the daughter of a very famous, iconic blonde woman.’ Those words exactly. I write it down, I tuck it away.”

About a year later, Snow said she got the call to audition for Hairspray from director Adam Shankman, whom she had worked on The Pacifier with in 2005. He told her she’d be perfect for the role, but despite this vote of confidence, Snow admitted she’s “a really, really nervous, anxious person just by nature” and therefore “really bad at auditioning.”

“My career would look completely different if I could audition, but I really get in my head and there’s this voice that comes in à la Parachute that says like, ‘You’re gonna f— it up. You’re gonna f— it up. Watch you f— it up,’ and then I do,” she continued.

Up against the likes of Hayden Panettiere and Rachel Bilson, who were all in the audition waiting room, too, Snow said she “unbelievably bombed it” by forgetting the words, having her voice crack, and asking to start over.

A devastated Snow then went home and started flipping through her journal when she was reminded of the psychic. “And I see this entry [about the psychic], and I call up Adam Shankman, swear to God, and I’m like, ‘I know this sounds insane, but I went to a psychic a year ago and she told me that I’m going to be in a movie with like a famous, blonde, iconic woman,’ and he goes, ‘Well, that’s really funny because Michelle Pfeiffer just signed on as Velma,'” she recalled.

The Pitch Perfect star continued, “I was like, ‘This is not a coincidence. You have to let me audition again,’ and [Shankman] was like, ‘This is such a crazy-ass story. I’m gonna let you audition because you’re so f—ing crazy.'”

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Obviously, it all worked out, and alongside Pfeiffer, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron, Christopher Walken, Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, James Marsden, and more, Hairspray was released to critical acclaim and financial success, breaking the record for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a movie musical at the time.

Despite the spooky prediction, Snow said her takeaway from the experience was: “I don’t even know if the psychic is real as much as that was giving me the confidence to call and get another chance, which I wouldn’t have done if I wouldn’t have gone.”

As for what was different in her second audition? “You know what was interesting, I had the wind beneath my wings that there was a psychic telling me I was going to get it, and so I was like, ‘It’s in the stars, baby,'” she concluded.