FLASHBACK: On the Set of ‘Coyote Ugly’ With Maria Bello and Piper Perabo

While there’s more to Coyote Ugly -- the 2000 rom-com starring Piper Perabo, Maria Bello, and Tyra Banks -- than dancing on the bar and getting doused in water, back when ET visited the set, it was all anyone could talk about.

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“We went to one of the bars in New York a couple of months ago where they it's sort of like [the real-life bar] Coyote Ugly where they do this sort of thing,” Bello explained to ET. “And the girls did this dance called the ‘water dance’ and it was hilarious because here they were pouring water on top of each other and really kind of sexy and wild to this great music… So they brought a dance similar to that into the movie.”

Oh, they sure did! Perabo, the film’s budding star, was at the center of all the raining water in the film. 

Despite all the bar-dancing, both Perabo and Banks had Coyote Ugly’s larger themes in mind.

“Since women run the bar, they encourage other women to get up on the bar and it's definitely deals with issues of empowerment,” Perabo said on set. “We can and we will dance on the bar.”

Perabo's character, Violet Stanford, was the newest bartender, trying to earn her place among the coyotes -- Cammie (Izabella Miko), Rachel (Bridget Moynahan), and Lil (Bello) -- and carve out her place in New York City as a successful songwriter. 

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“The movie is about dreams,” Banks adds. The model turned actress played Zoe, an aspiring lawyer who worked at Coyote to pay her way through school. “It's about seeing a dream and knowing that can't always see the dream and reach out and conquer it. There's little baby steps that you have to take to get to where you want, where you want to be.”


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