Katie Holmes has played a few mysterious, slightly bad-girl characters in her time–an adulterous fiance in The Gift, a literary student clad in red cowboy boots in Wonderboys–but there’s one role she was considered for that would have taken a huge turn from anything she’d done before.

Jenji Kohan, creator of Orange Is The New Black, said she considered Holmes for the role of Piper, but the actress ended up having other commitments.

“She had other things to do. And also in the beginning, no one knew what this was,” Kohan said.

The show has garnered a huge following on Netflix and would have propelled Holmes into another hit television series had she taken the role. But according to Kate Mulgrew, who plays Red on the show, it’s probably for the best that she didn’t get it.

“She better watch herself. Pretty girls have to watch out in that prison.”

Holmes has indeed been busy with acting projects and a producing gig on the book-to-movie adaptation of All We Had. Holmes also went topless for a Glamour photo shoot recently, which made headlines.

“I have done it before when I was young, the right time to do it. But if the part called for it, sure, I’d do it again. I think people need to embrace themselves, their creativity and their bodies,” she said.

Image via Wikimedia Commons