Anna Kendrick almost sang 'I'm a Little Teapot' instead of 'Cups' in 'Pitch Perfect'

• "Cups," sung by Anna Kendrick in "Pitch Perfect," became a viral hit after its release.
• The song wasn't originally in the film — it was added after Kendrick used it in her audition.

Ten years on from the release of the a cappella comedy "Pitch Perfect," the film's most iconic cultural moment remains "Cups."

The song, performed by Anna Kendrick for her character Beca's a cappella audition, exploded following the release of the film. Covers went viral online, and Kendrick eventually released a remix version, titled "Cups (Pitch Perfect's 'When I'm Gone')," in April 2013. Three months later, the remix cracked the Billboard Top 10; it currently has over 638 million views on YouTube.

"Cups" didn't originate with the film. As Vulture reported, the song "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?," first recorded in 1928 by The Original Carter Family, was initially paired with the cup rhythm routine in 2009, by the band Lulu and the Lampshades. After Kendrick came across the routine online, she used it as her audition for the film.

And thus a viral moment, and chart-topping hit, were born.

Kendrick's character was originally supposed to sing 'I'm a Little Teapot'

In the film, Beca performs "Cups" during her audition for the Barden Bellas, the female a cappella group at fictional Barden University.

But "Cups" wasn't originally part of the plan, screenwriter Kay Cannon told Insider.

In early drafts of the script, Beca was supposed to perform "I'm a Little Teapot" — an offbeat choice compared to other auditioners that would show off her singing skills, but that "you could absolutely make fun of," Cannon said.

Kendrick took a similar route at her own audition for "Pitch Perfect." While other auditioners performed hits from the likes of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, director Jason Moore said that when it came for her to sing, Kendrick simply pulled out a cup and started to do the routine she'd learned from YouTube.

"It's kind of like in the movie, when everyone's watching it for the first time, and they're like, 'What the fuck is that?'" Moore said. "We were just all kind of flabbergasted."

When it came time to film the scene, Kendrick rehearsed the "I'm A Little Teapot" bit, but Moore said it didn't land the way they wanted. So they tried "Cups" instead.

"I think we were like, why are we not just using the thing that she wowed us with in this exact scenario?" he told Insider. "It's so meta and perfect, let's do it."

Kendrick is happy they did. When "Pitch Perfect 3" was released in 2017, she told Jimmy Fallon that she had no idea how she would have sung "I'm a Little Teacup" in the original film.

"Thank God they changed that," she said.

The sequence was filmed to highlight that Kendrick was doing it for real

When it came to replicating the thrill of Kendrick's audition on-screen, director of photography Julio Macat told Insider that he wanted to highlight that she was "really doing this."

He and Moore settled on a continuous shot, putting together a sequence with very few cuts — mostly to Anna Camp's Aubrey and Brittany Snow's Chloe — to focus on the performance itself.

Getting that shot was easier said than done. Due to the film's low budget, the crew couldn't afford the kind of equipment they would normally use to achieve the shot. Macat said that steadicam operator Chris McGuire had to ride on a dolly, a wheeled cart that's typically mounted on tracks, and crawl out over an extension arm, a piece of mounting equipment that extends a camera's range.

"Normally you just get a nice telescoping crane, and that's that," Macat said, referencing a piece of film equipment that extends a remotely operated camera outwards. "But because we couldn't afford it, it was him reaching and then dollying close to her."

Already popular online, the song became a sensation after the movie was released

The viral popularity of "Cups" predated "Pitch Perfect": in 2011, covers abounded online after Anna Burden covered Lulu and the Lampshades' version, HuffPost reported.

After "Pitch Perfect," however, "Cups" exploded. As Google Trends data shows, searches for the term "cup song" began to spike in January 2013. They peaked in August of that year, after Kendrick's recording of the song hit the Billboard charts.

Cannon, the film's screenwriter, told Insider that people would send her all kinds of videos featuring the song, including a memorable one of schoolboys in Dublin, Ireland "singing 'Cups' at the top of their lungs" in the city's streets.

Moore, on the other hand, caught some flak from friends whose children had seen the film.

"I had a lot of friends of mine that I went to high school with that were like, 'Fuck you, my kid's trying to learn the cup song. No one's getting any sleep, I can't do it, it takes a lot of practice,'" he told Insider. "I'm like, 'Sorry!'"