During a scene between Kat and Ms. Perky where the guidance counselor rather bluntly tells Kat how she's viewed by the rest of the school, Ms. Perky picks up her coffee mug as she says Kat's name and then notices there's a cat on the mug. "Kat. Meow," she says before quickly going back to her speech. While speaking about "10 Things I Hate About You" for a 2014 BuzzFeed career retrospective, Allison Janney revealed, "I ad-libbed, 'Kat. Meow.'"
Janney continued on to explain that ad-libbing is a regular thing for her. "That was me. I do that on some movies when I feel like the atmosphere is right and ['10 Things I Hate About You' director] Gil Junger was open to it and just let me do whatever I wanted to do. I was really thrilled about that one," she said.
That is quite a memory for someone who allegedly forgot she was in the movie altogether. In 2020, Janney replied to an Instagram post celebrating her performance in the film by commenting, "I don't understand! What is this????? What am I in that I forget I was in?" This, however, may have been a joke as she took to her own Instagram just one year earlier to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary.
It's possible that Janney was having a brief memory lapse similar to Gwyneth Paltrow forgetting what Marvel movies she has appeared in. Or perhaps it was the actor pulling a joke on her fans — after all, we know how good she is at those ad-libs.
