Mean Girls: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We're your two Janice Ian's of jabbering inanities. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Tug and Jordan's Today we're talking about one of the load stars of addies entertainment, the ionic or is it Doric column that propped up BuzzFeed quizzes for decades and continues to dominate the conversation on social media every October three. That's right, folks, welcome back to mummu Wary. We're talking about seventeen the Mummy. Sorry, Tom Cruise, I'm just kidding. We're talking about being girls. Um. I'm glad you brought that Mummy bit back. Mummu Wary m come on, and then next will be Mummy fifty nine, which I think is Chris for Lee's that the Hammer horror one that's neither here nor there. Let's get down to brass text. Can I Jordan? Can I be honest with you always? I don't remember a time in my life that Mean Girls wasn't in it. I know mathematically that it had to have happened. But this movie has been in my skull since I saw it first thanks to the girl I was in love with in high school who made Hugo Glen Coco her a I AM screen name. And then she could have gotten a lot of money for that screen name. I bet Wow. Well maybe on Twitter, but not on a I am. No one's selling those anyway. Um. And then by the time we were professionals in the content industrial minds, this was like every BuzzFeed quiz like which Mean Girls are? Line? Are you? Which? Blah blah blah bi blue, And every October three it comes back and every Wednesday Wednesdays. Yeah. So, now none of that short seals the fact that it rules. It's a great movie. It's whip smart, it's funny, it's kind a good chord to it, it's got great performances. So I just want to get that out of the way. But I am, I've had it. It's the Stairway to Heaven of Audi's teen comedies. I just tend to prefer thirty Rock at this point. If I'm looking for that unique Teina fe snark, I'm going for thirty Rock, but it's such a fascinating document of its time. Great Lindsey low End before the fall, uh and then this Dieseling sorry Lindsay Dizzy ng assemblage of twenty something's masquerading as high schoolers. You get your Rachel McAdams, you get your Lizzie Kaplan, Lacy Sabert, Amanda Safe Read, Tim Meadows, who is in his twenties making Now I'm kidding, what are your thoughts on Mean Girls? I mean, I love it. My main memory of this movie is when it came out and it was like Star Wars or something. At my high school. Everyone I knew I went to see this movie the weekend it came out, And I am really hard pressed to think of a movie that had that kind of impact on my social circle in that era. Not the Matrix movies, not the Lord of the Rings movies, not the Pirates of the Cribby movies, not even the Harry Potter series. And my memory of the opening weekend dovetails with appropriately enough humiliating high school incident of my own, so it'll always be used of the show for you. It's a little discursive, but if you'll, if you'll indulge me um. There was this really cool thing that my high school did. Every year. They hosted something called the Indie, which was the student run independent arts festival, and one night each May, just before graduation, the school would turn over the auditorium and give kids a platform to showcase pretty much whatever art they wanted to make. Bands would play, people would dance, people would show their short films, perform their plays. It was really cool and there was a lot of talent at my high school. My friend Chris Fleming, who's a brilliant comedian of some renowned through his work on YouTube and his stand up specials, he was in the grade above me, and he was on the Indie board and he performed at it, and it was just really cool to see the stuff that kids were making. Anyway, I went to the Indie my freshman year of high school in two thousand and three, and I met this girl, great, wonderful person. We had a deep connection. Sadly, it did not work out for reasons that were on my fault, and I was deeply, deeply, deeply heartbroken. Uh and I channeled this heartbreak into my first play, which was performed at the Indie my sophomore year, and you know, it was the one year anniversary of my meeting this girl, and I knew she was going to be there, and I don't know, I thought it was going to be this big, grand, romantic gesture to win her back. I can't tell you something. Yeah, that's weird, I know, I know. And and it didn't work either, which is yeah, I could have told you that, I know. But when I was fifteen, sixteen, I yeah, I know. Basically, No, it's the exact gesture I would expect you as at six. Oh yeah, I mean. And then this person again, she was a beautiful, wonderful person. Sure it wasn't that bad of a play, wasn't. I mean, I mean again, this person is a beautiful, wonderful person. And I was slash m a lunatic. So I take of responsibility here. She has an amazing family. Now we DM on occasion. It's great. At that time not so much. I was sad. I was in the right a play stage of grieving. So anyway, I had scheduled rehearsals for my play the friday that Mean Girls was released, which apparently, I'm told is April four, and essentially every single cast member of my play came up to me at some point during the day and said, sorry, we can't make rehearsal. We're going to see Mean Girls tonight. And I just remember thinking, Wow, that's like really cool. I'd love to write something someday that was so smart and funny that all my friends would be excited to see it. You know. It's a powerful little moment for a heartbroken, love struck sixteen year old. And then a few years later, I was at in my youth studying dramatic writing, and all the students and faculty absolutely worship thirty Rock and leaves to like dissect the scripts and examine the jokes and the plots. So all this to say, I'll respect the Tina Fey and this incredible movie. I'm well aware that the anecdote was more about me than it was about her, but she made a very big impression on me at a very impressionable age. So I will always have a soft spot for well. Yeah, well. From the movie's roots in a book authored by a black belt political scientist, to the role swapping that went on among the film's leads, to the elaborate editing trickery that was needed for that four way phone call scene. Here's everything you didn't know about Mean Girls. Mean Girls has its genesis in a book called Queen Bees and Wannabes Helping Your Daughter Survive Clicks, Gossip, boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence, by a woman named Rosalind Wiseman. Wiseman grew up in Washington, d C. The oldest of three children. In two and two People mag profile, she said that well outwardly she was a quote pearls and tennis skirt wearing happy girl. She was so concerned with maintaining her place as part of the in crowd that she stayed in a relationship with a boy who is considered the catch of the school for four years, even though he was physically abusive to her. To prove you belong, she told the magazine, you can do incredibly stupid things. Her family and friends never had a clue. And then she goes away to college. She goes to Occidental College in Los Angeles, and she gets into doing martial arts. She gets into doing the Korean karate offshoot Tang Su Do, breaks up with a guy, hopefully beats his ass that wasn't in the people profile, but that'd be great. Uh. Mary is the guy that she took karate, that he introduced her to tang su Do graduates with a degree in political science and a second degree black belt in tang su Do and uh they started martial arts school in Washington, d C. That rules. Hell. Yeah, I think for legal reasons, she couldn't be like I beat the living, but I really hoped she did. Um. But she and her husband noticed that the girls in their self defense class were coming to them more with questions about their personal lives than say, punching, and so they pivoted and established something called the Empower Program that basically was kind of a traveling workshop and seminar giving class giving business taught teens had a stand up for themselves and build more positive relationships, focusing on interpersonal relationships amongst amongst their peer groups with stuff like apologies day. Uh. These seminars and then eventually the book that sprung from them, were packed with terms that fans of the movie will instantly find recognizable like alpha girls, r mg s, which is really mean girls, queen bees, wanna bees, messengers, uh, bankers, which is someone who collects information and uses it later to their advantage, which Tina Fay told The New York Times in two thousand four that was her archetype. What are you, Jordan, I'm probably also a banker. I have a question for you about apologies day that seems to kind of be an athetical to the whole black belt. I guess it means I apologize to people. It's like a coming clean thing, almost like I didn't read the book Pretty want from me run talk in that. In that interview she mentions Heather's which is funny because that's not the first time this will come up in connection with me and girls, she says. Uh. In this interview with The New York Times magazine in two thousand two, she describes Heathers as pretty true to life with respect to her dealings with the teenage girls. There's a great quote from Rosalind Wiseman's book. That's what it gives you, the idea of a tone and the message of it. You may feel that it's not worth making a federal case out of not getting invited to a birthday party or letting your daughter blow off one friend for another. But these aren't trivial issues. They lay the groundwork for girls faking their feelings, pretending to be some when they're not pleasing others at their own expense, or otherwise sacrificing self esteem and authenticity. Interviewed about the film in Wiseman said that much of what Tina Fee put in the film was close to her work, minus the trust fall scene. She told the wire, I do not do trust falls. I've never done trust falls. I will never do trust falls. I just remember when I saw the movie for the first time, being like Tina, I do not do that. But other elements of the movie came out of conversation she had with Tina Rosald and Wiseman said, Tina came down and hung out with me. The things that were surprising to me were things that I sort of set off the cuff walking around, I said to her walking around my neighborhood. The way I look at this is I look at it like a watering hole where you've got predators. They're hanging out and they're looking at the animals that are drinking water and they're not sure if they're going to attack them or not. And that's the way I look at group dynamics with young people. She really says a way with words, way with an image. I remember seeing that mall scene she continued and thinking, Jesus, I said this to her. That made me laugh hysterically. I remember thinking, gosh, I just said that to her off the cuff, and then she takes that and makes an incredible scene out of it. But overall, she was extremely happy with the way Tina fee handle for material. She said, I wouldn't change anything. I turned out a lot of other people on making Queen Bees a movie, and it was an easy note to all those other people, but it was an easy yes to Tina. I thought this was a smart woman who was funny, who sort of had my sensibility, So why wouldn't I. Both Tina and I seem to be trying to carve out a space of how to give women a voice in public. So it's pretty cool to have a collaboration between two people who say, yeah, let's work together to do this, because you're smart, you're funny. I think you're going to do a good job. Let's try it. She was happy about the creative side, but less so the financials, and Yeah, Wiseman went on the record on Artie Shahani's art of Power podcast on w b Easy Chicago with her dissatisfaction the way that the money side of her Mean Girls deal shook out. She explained that she received the initial payout of four hundred and forty grand for her deal with Paramount Pictures, which is doesn't seem like an amount to sneeze at, but you know, that's pretty standard for adaptation rights for a bestseller. But then she says she got nothing else from the deal, which goes against her contract because she said that Paramount promised her five percent of the net proceeds from Mean Girls. That film pulled in about a hundred thirty million at the worldwide box office. But she said on the podcast that because of the classic Hollywood accounting, she was told by the studio the film was not profitable and that therefore she was not entitled to any further payments. Let's just happened on a few films we've talked about on this show, including some of the Star Wars prequels. It's actually Return of the Jedi. Return of the Jedi. Yes, lucasfilm says it has not made money. Well. On a similar note, I like to quote this little nugget from the Hollywood accounting Wikipedia page. Yes, as a whole Wikipedia page about these questionable financial practices. A Water Brothers receipt was leaked online in showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from two thousand seven ended up as a hundred and sixty seven million dollar loss on paper, despite the fact that it grows nearly a billion dollars. How do they I still don't understand how they're able to fudge the numbers so much on paper. I think half of it is just being like, we have more money for lawyers than you do, and like, do you want to make this a court case or do you want to take us at our word and our specious accounting? Okay yeah. Wiseman added that she was hurt when she heard Mean Girls was being developed into a Broadway musical by Faye and her husband Jeff Richmond, because at the time she signed the deal quote, there is no way for me to know that musical was in the future. There's no way to know that. So I was signing away rights. I didn't know that I had or was even up for. Lastly, and perhaps most damningly, she claimed that she asked Faye to vouch for additional money for her for these rights with Paramount, and Faye allegedly promised to help her and even go to Lauren Michael's and then ghosted her. You certainly don't want to admit it out loud because you don't want the world to look at this and then create some meme about like mean women and mean girls and dismissing and superficializing the work, because there is this inconsistency in real life, Wiseman said, and she continued, why was I so silent when I was literally telling boys and girls all of this time to speak out when they've experienced an abuse of power, Because like, just like everybody else, I got into a situation where I was intimidated and felt overwhelmed, and that silenced me. So that's kind of a bummer. That's why you always get You don't ever get net. You always angle for a chunk of the gross. But honestly, the fact that she was even able to for a first time author having your book adapted into a movie, that's even the fact that she was able to get points promised to her is something I don't know but not thinking about, Like potential TV shows down the Road or music. Was like, that seems like a rookie mistake. I know another classic Rosalind Wiseman. You receive a B minus in our in the t m I Business Smarts class. Just punching this woman. This is that's that's tough like. But now let's uh take it to the face side of things. Um. She wrote the treatment to this when she was still working at snl UM. She told Savannah Guthrie on The Today Show in twenty nine, I saw this article in the New York Times about a woman named roz Wiseman who had written this book. I was like, I want to make a movie of that. Talking to I g N in two thousand twelve, Face said, I had read this article about Rosalin in the New York Times magazine, and so then I went to Lauren Michael's and I think between Lauren and Paramount together we got an advanced copy of Rosalind's book and I read it and then I called Rosalind on the phone and I introduced myself and I sort of asked for her and in marriage. So that's just funny because she is talking about the New York Times magazine article I cited earlier. I love it when I can find like the exact thing that sparked some creative work calling it. It can't have been that many. From two thousand two people had called about turning it into a movie or a TV show, and I had no problem turning them down because it was always something cheesy. Rosalind Wiseman told The New York Times for their oral history of the film, there are a lot of oral histories of mean girls. It's what I learned. They were trying to make it about me. You're so inspirational. And then Tina called. I didn't know who she was. I had a new baby, I had a book coming out, I wasn't watching SNW, but I knew it was important to her that it was not going to be stupid. From the time I said yes until the time it came out was about eighteen months as yeah, it's a crazy turnaround time. When I first pitched it to Lauren, I was thinking I'd like to write a movie about what they call relational aggression among girls. Fatal Vulture for their oral history, he was like, okay, but could they also still have cool cars and cool clothes, which is a very learned Michael's thing to ask, and I was like, oh, for sure. You know Lauren's favorite line in this movie talk to me again and I'll kick your ass, also a very Lauren Michael's line. Yeah. So this script for me Girls was Tina phase first, and she wrote it completely by herself, without the studio bringing in any more established writers to punch it up. She later told Savannah gut three that was really rare, especially at that time. This awesome woman named Sherry Lansing who ran Paramount Pictures of the time. She never took the script away from me. She also admitted when she was talking to New York Times with two thousand and four, it was kind of a bonehead thing to do on my part for my first screenplay, to try to adapt the non fiction, non narrative book. I had to make up the whole story. I mean, it's not Chinatown, but just to keep a story moving forward was all new to me. I did a million drafts, and I did the thing everybody does. I read Sid Field, who wrote a book called The Fautinations and Screenwriting, and I used my little index cards, which is a you know, screenwriting one on one technique where you write a scene on the next card, and you have to be able to fit what you want the scene to actually achieve on the index card. You know, if it can't fit on there, then you've got to distill it down into its essence, you know what I mean. Like, you've got to be able to sum up what you want to occur in that scene on the screen and what it's meant to do to move the plot forward, and it's gonna be able to fit on any next car. It's a good approach someone like me, who talks too much and writes too much. It's useful. Aside from pulling in material from her conversations with Russell and Wiseman, Tina Fey added in bits to the script from her own life. She told I, Genne, I did have a health teacher that was kind of like the health teacher in this movie, like a really poorly informed health teacher. And I had some of Katie's storyline with Aaron in terms of her ossessive pursuit of him. That was sort of like the fumbling, obsessive pursuit that I was trying to do in high school. It never worked out for me, you and me both, Tina, Yeah, she didn't mention if she she wrote a play for anyone. I want to clarify the play wasn't like I was like calling this girl out in front of the entire school. It had nothing like. I mean, there's no cause I'm imagining the musical that Charlie writes in. Uh, it's always sunny where he casts him you know, he cast himself as a little boy or needing you. No, he doesn't cast himself. He writes her as anyway. Yeah, it was. It wasn't like the day man. No, absolutely not, no, no, no, it has had no it was. It was a public apology. It had nothing to do it. I did not publicly shame her. No, no, I didn't say you were shaming her the um it was an apology. No, no, no it was. It was like that's almost worse. No, it wasn't an apology. It was what was it called I don't want to tell you? Not a good sign? I thought this was really sorry, No, no, don't, don't don't. Emma was five dollars, and I will tell you the name of George's high school apology play to the girl. It was I'm okay, it's okay. You have pictures of me with dreadlocks and a fretless bass cancelable, which really shouldn't be, but also the moment where Regina says to Katie, Oh, you think you're really pretty? Oh, so you agree that happened to Tina Fee, which is yeah, girls have been weird to each other since time immemorial. U. Tina Fe also has a personal connection to the line when Regina compliments this girl walking by on her skirt and then says to Katie, that is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen in my life. And Tina Fe later explained to black film dot Com, my mom has this habit that if she sees a lady in a really ugly hat or a glittery sweatshirt, she'll go, I love your shirt. And I'll say, Mom, that's really mean, and she'll say, clearly, she wanted someone to notice that shirt. She picked it out. It has a huge Teddy bear on it. Mm hmm. While people have speculated that Lohan's character's name Katie c a d wise a tribute to suffrage at Elizabeth Katie Stanton, it was also the name of phase college roommate at University of Virginia. I tried to use real names in writing because it's just easier, Tina told Entertainment Weekly, my older brother's good friend is Glenn Coco. He's a film editor in Los Angeles, and I imagine it's a pain in the butt for him. She also named the character of Shane Ohman, who is Regina's boyfriend, after Aaron after a stage manager at Second City. Janice Ian, obviously the name of a real life singer songwriter. She was the first ever musical guest on SNL. She's best known for the teen girl in Pain anthem at seventeen, which is one of the many songs Tina fe sings in in thirty Rock How Had. She also based her character on Kelly Osborne Sorca two thousand three, that was the Janice end character in Okay. Ms Norbury is named after phase high school German teacher, and while she cast her helf as the character, she told The New York Times to combat the perception that women can't do math. She also admitted to stealing lesson plans from a friend's boyfriend, who was a calculus teacher in The Bronx, just to help script the math parts. The first draft of Me and Girls, Tina told The New York Times was quote for sure our rated. I was trying to write a truthful high school experience, so there was a lot of swearing and there was some more sex. John Goldman, the guy at Paramount, when I was writing my first draft, he told me, right, it the way you want to write it. Don't worry about swearing. This is Tina talking to I. G N. That was wise because that was my first draft, so it was our rated. Regina was swearing like a sailor, just terrible language, and it kind of got out of my system. Maybe coming from TV. I just needed to break free of my chains for a second. And then by the time we got the second and third draft, it was like, you know, we really do want to try to get a PG thirteen rating for this movie because I wanted girls to be able to see the movie. I wasn't trying to like dumb it down necessarily and write it for little girls, but I didn't want them to not be able to see it, especially with Lindsay in the movie, because Lindsay had a lot of fans, and so we went through and cleaned it up. Yeah. The other thing, the director Mark Water says that what happened was the send. One of the things that happened was Freaky Friday to come out and been a huge and Paramount was like, oh, this has to be now, because you can't have all the people who like Lindsay Lohan from being uh in you know, Disney adjacent Disney thing. Yeah, suddenly turning the air blue. Um. Among the changes that they made to the scripture substituting butter your muff the I guess you call it an idiom. A lot of the changes were substituting the innuendo butter your muffin for the original which was pop your cherry, and uh substituting made Out with a Frozen hot Dog for Masturbated with a frozen hot dog. Director Mark Waters still remembers though they ended up in a standoff with the MP double A over a completely different and much more innocuous part. The line in the sand that I drew, he told Vulture, was a joke about the wide set vagina. The ratings board said, we can't give you a PG. Thirteen unless you cut that line. We ended up playing the card that the ratings board was sexist because Anchor Man had just come out and Ron Burgundy had an erection in one scene and that was PG. Thirteen. We told them, you're only saying this because it's a girl and she's talking about a part of her anatomy. There's no sexual context whatsoever, and to say this is restrictive to an audience of girls is demeaning to all women, and eventually they had to back down. Stephanie Drummond, the actress who plays the subject of that line, told Cosmopolitan UK. I remember they called my agent to see if I'd be comfortable saying the vagina line, and I said sure. It became this big thing over time with social media, but I was really happy and excited. I thought it was so funny. I was acting as the use have gone by, especially since I moved to the States. Everywhere I go, I'm the wide set vagina girl looking forward to clipping that line out of context from this episode whenever I got a text from you. Ah. Despite all that haggling, Uh, there's still quite a bit of line swapping that happened on set, even during filming. One of the great things and luxuries then was to have the best punch up writer in the business on your set. Waters told Logo if a joke wasn't working. I'd be like, Tina, what can we do. She'd say, give me a few minutes and give me five new lines that were all funnier than the last. We'd try out discarded jokes that got lost in production from like two drafts back, and that would sometimes be the thing that worked. At some point, the title of the film was changed from Homeschooled two mean girls. Homeschool doesn't as good. Yeah, I think the whole plot about her growing up in like Africa with her mother who was what a zoologist? That was like a late addition to the movie. Mark Waters and Lindsay had a prior relationship because he directed Lindsay in the Freaky Friday remake for Disney. And the other hilarious connection that Mark Waters has to this movie is that his brother Daniel wrote Heathers and Batman returns No what I I had no idea it was a connection between those two. Wow and Mark Waters hold nitrate online in two thousand three. The funny thing is, I like to make fun of my brother saying that it's kind of an easy way out to kill your bulleys. It's more interesting if the main character actually has to use more devious means to get back at the Queen Bee, and in doing so, becomes the Queen Bee herself. Also, the thing that I really like about this movie in the script form was that it seemed like it had the potential to be a John Hughes movie as well, like Heather's Remade by John Hughes. That's a very good elevator pitch. Yeah, but you can see someone saying that to paramount, I mean the paramount executive in the proverbial cash signs going off in their eyes as you meditate on that. We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, hast think Mean Girls was a headache pretty much from start to finish, So Hi go run us down well. When Waters initially gave the script to Lindsay, she told him I love Regina, George, this is exactly the part that I want to play, So he said. We did a read through and we were trying to look for somebody to play the role of Katie, but frankly we didn't find it. And when we liked who felt strong enough to go up against Lindsay. And then in the interim, as I mentioned before, Freaky Friday had come out so paramount exact. Sherry Lansing told Waters, you have to make Lindsay the lead. She can't be the villain in this, and also presumably make a PG. Thirteen. Lindsay kind of begrudgingly said, Okay, I guess I'll play the lead. At least I get to have more lines. Apparently she missed the first day of filming due to having a case of pink eye. I'm guessing the first day I was on a Wednesday, a golf swing. Yeah, we gotta we gotta figure out a way to make that a cue. Lindsay Leman sat on all the auditions, she told Entertainment Weekly. She said that Amanda Safe for you audition to play Regina as well. It ended up being Rachel McAdams, and she's wonderful. Lindsay said. McAdams was twenty four. She was one of the oldest people in the cast. Uh and she auditioned for Katie and Waters told her point blank that she was too old to play that character. He said, no one will buy you as an ingenue, which is like a curiously cruel old timey studio head thing to say no one will buy you as an on genous Sweetheart over the Hill. I hear that casting for Austinik and old Lace down at the public the Return of the Cigar Shopping Executive. UM. Anyway, he switched her over once Lindsay changed roles, and McAdams said, this was the script that made me call my manager halfway through and say I will play any part in this. Tina hit a nerve about girl politics, but in a non confrontational way. Mark Waters told her to watch Alec Baldwin scene in Glengarry Glenn Ross inspiration and listened to Courtney Love and honestly another perfect perfect ven diagram there the overlap of Alec Poullowan and Glen Garry gunn Ross and Courtney Love is regeta George. I mean, I assume it's the always be closing speech. Oh yeah, well there's the only scene he's in the movie. You're right, Yeah, it's like him. Heath Ledger and Anthony Hopkins that I think have the records for like shortest screen time per Oscar nomination UM and Hathaway and Lee Miss She won Shortest Oscar, Shortest Oscar nominee. Anthony Hopkins was only on there in Scienceiliams for Like Not Under for under twenty five minutes. That is wild. I can't believe that that is Shortest was Spencer Tracy for being nominated for San Francisco. He was in that movie for under fifteen minutes. That was for Best Leading. Um. I don't think if there's any other. Oh, Louise Fletcher was nominated for Cougar's Nest. She's not and she's in it for twenty two minutes and already seven seconds. Was there a threat if that makes sense? Yeah? Yeah, supporting actor. Oh. I didn't actually don't see heath litter on this list. A lot of these are old and timey. Hmm. Interesting anyway, Apparently that that advice worked. When Lindsay was acting with Rachel, she got very shy because Rachel was older and a very accomplished actress. Mark Waters said she'd come in the room and not talk to Lindsay. She was very focused. Lindsey kind of got nervous around her, and I thought that, more than anything, was going to be the deciding factor. The fact that she affected Lindsay in that way. McAdams were a very expensive wig for the film, since her hair was cut short and apparently died pink at the time, and Jonathan Bennett, who played Aaron Samuel's, added to Entertainment Weekly. Rachel McAdams has the softest lips on the face of the earth that anyone will ever kiss, hands down. I think I did tell her that we kissed for the first time on camera, and I was like, WHOA, can you deliver that line again, but just a little closer to the mic, A little slower, can you? Yeah? And I was like, WHOA, I should write you a play. You should punch in the Kanti Reeves matrix. Meanwhile, Mark Waters told E W. The person who was neck and neck for the role of Regina and we agonized over which one we were going to cast was a man of Saye Freed. She tested for Regina and was kind of brilliant and very different than Rachel's approach. She played it in a much more ethereal but still kind of scary way. She was more frightening, but oddly less intimidating. I could almost see her as being like almost like the Daisy character and the Great Gatsby. How like aloof she is kind of makes her terrifying. Yeah, Rachel, a man of Sayfried has those like terrifying like gallam eyes, so she could do a lot with just those. I could see that it was actually Lauren Michaels. He suggested that Saffreed play Karen, so Waters said she came in and read it and nailed it, and we got the best of both worlds. And I'm pretty sure Mean Girls was a man of safe Reed's feature film debut. Oh yeah, because she just graduated from high school. Yeah yeah. Casting director Marcy Leroff told Cosmo that they wanted Blake Lively, who hadn't yet done The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. They want of her for the role of Karen, and I guess she made it to the final screen tests but didn't get the gig. Marcy Learoff continued, we had a difficult time casting Gretchen Wieners. I kept reading young actresses for the role. Actually Tuesday audition for the part, but didn't come down to the finals. There was a certain type of desperation for Gretchen. He really felt for her. How do you say this person's name, Lacey Shabe, Lazy shab. How do you know who the Lazy Shabet is? She's on Wild Thornberry's She's one of my she's my second favorite nineties Brunette wasn't in Party of Five or I'm impressed that you know this much about these people. Just had a big crush on her, Her and Jennifer and j J. J. Low Hugh. I do love how much you love Jennifer love you at that warms my heart a lot. It's very pure love. I saw her and I don't know what you did last summer and was stricken. My nineties brunette three names heart throb was Rachel Lee Cook. She's in a similar mold. Yeah, I just didn't see that. I don't think I saw movies that she was in as much. I didn't really. I really only saw she's all that. Oh Josie and the Pussycats too. That was I wasn't a Josie and the Pussycats guy. I know that's a big form. She should do that one. Yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised that you weren't. It was like, I think it was just women with guitars, and I think it was just like too close to spice girls for me. Were you more Spice Girls than Josie? No? I just still had like a bad taste in my mouth from just like groups of ten year old girls like accosting me in the playground and screaming girl power in my face. I was very threatened by women in groups of four still am Actually it's a powerful number. I thought there are only three in Josie and Pussy Kids. I don't know why, why do you encourage these bits? I'm making them up as I go along. Well, the hell are we? Lay shat lazy Shabert, who ended up playing the part of Gretchen Wainterers totally w I thought it was really wrong for Gretchen. The character description physically was very different from me. She was supposed to be really gangly. I loved how insecure she was for me the comedy came, and her trying so desperately to please everyone and fit in and having no clue of her own identity. I was never the cool kid, she added to The New York Times. I wore mini mouse stuff, and I was growing up in Hollywood. I always falled under a microscope on the top of a Gretchen Wainters she was the one constantly trying to make fetch happen, and Tina Fey later said that she wrote fake slang like fetch in the movie to ensure that it didn't sound dated when you watched it back years later. I know, really, She says in one of those interviews that she was at the pharmacy once sick, picking up a prescription, and the pharmacist just like you don't look very fetched today. They all say they get these lines quoted at them like constantly, but I can in the line of the farness so that your pharmacists seems a little rough. Where it was this Tina Fair question Winners, that was lazy Shabat talking about him like um to vulture. Waters dispelled the persistent rumor that Scarlett Johansson auditioned for the film. He said he did test her for something, but not Mean Girls. He tested her for the Secret Life of Walter Middy, which he was originally attached to direct when Owen Wilson was in the lead, and he said she definitely would have booked that part. It was eventually made with Ben Stiller in the lead. You know, if you can't get Owen Wilson, you get Ben Stiller at that time, and uh, Christian Wig is the lead romantic lady in that. I think, so I would have thought the other way around. I would have thought that Ben Stiller was more bankable than Owen Wilson at that time. Good question, good question, good question. Not for us to decide, you know. I think I read that Evan rachel Wood was also can for a role in Girls. I'm not sure what one, but I imagine it was because of a role in thirteen. But she passed because she was in a similar movie at the time, the name of which I can't recall because it was not as good as me. And Lizlie Kaplan, who plays Janaze, and said that she was closer to her own character in high school than probably most of the other people were. She said she I had my hair dyed black and was into Charles Bokowski, which I would have fallen for her then too. For the movie, I wanted to wear tons of layers and dark eye makeup. I cooked my hair, literally burned it with a flat iron to make it stick up straighter. Only now this interview was in two thousand fourteen. Ten years later, it has recovered. Uh, Lizzie wanted to play Janis, but we had to make her look more gothic and bizarre than she actually has. Waters told Cosmopolitan UK Damien. He said, the character of Damien was an unbelievable challenge to cast, and we just couldn't find him. Tina and I met Daniel Frenzaise in New York City and really liked him. He was so funny and had such a great personality. But he came in the room auditioned and was terrible. We were going to l a to do the read through and still hadn't cast Damien. We were getting very frustrated. Then Tina and I remembered how funny Daniel was and thought he would be great just to have in the room, even if we didn't give him the part. He came and he brought it. He'd clearly done his homework and was getting huge laughs. By the time it was over, we knew he was our Damien Frenzies. He said that at this time he had confided in some parents and friends that he was gay, but he was so largely closeted, and he came out in a public letter that he wrote to his character. On the tenth anniversary of the film. He told Cosmo, I came out because I got a letter from a fan who said that when they were in the eighth grade, he was beat up for being chubby and tortured for being a sissy. And then in ninth grade the movie came out and on the first day of school, the popular senior girls said, you're like Damien, come sit with us. Before that, I was in New Orleans and a bouncer to gay Bar told me how much my character gave him. It took me a long time to realize how impactful it is and how important representation in film is. So those fan interactions are really beautiful. But he had a slightly less nice interaction with Christina Aguilera years later, which you know obviously was sad for him because one of the big moments in the movies when he sings her song Beautiful. Daniel later told Yahoo, I thought for sure that would be an exciting moment of my life. I was like, Christina, my name is Daniel, I sing beautiful and mean girls. And she was like, I never saw it. What a great dismissal. And then she turned her back and walked away. She was so rude. But Daniel's relationship to the film is very powerful. His letter reads, in part, looking back, it took you, referring to his character Damnian, to teach me how to be proud of myself again. It's okay if no one wants to sit at the table with the art freaks. Being a queer artist is one of my favorite things out myself. I've always been different and that's rad. Perhaps this will help someone else. I had to remind myself that my parents named me Daniel because it means God is my judge. So I'm not afraid anymore of Hollywood, the closet or mean girls. Thank you for that. Damien and Daniel talked about how Mean Girls helped him embrace his own sexuality and the interview with my friend Jeff Nelson for People magazine Ineen. He said, I think part of the reason it took me so long to feel comfortable with who I was was I didn't have the same referential point what Damien did for a lot of queer people and people of size, which I found out later on, it gave them an identity and pop culture where they weren't made fun of. He's never made fun of for being big or for being gay. Jonathan Bennett, who played the love interest Aaron Samuel's, told Cosmo, I did a screen test with Lindsay and I made her blush on camera. I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I just booked this job, but came to find out they hired someone else. Oh this is true. Mark waterstold Cosmo. The other guy had a great audition, but he came to the table read, sat with his nose in the script and mumbled the whole way through keep that description in mind. Yes, yes, very very much. So by the time it was over, Lauren came over to me and said, that's a shame. We're gonna have to go with that other guy. Jonathan Bennett continued, I was working at Abercrombie and Fitch. I was folding sweaters in the front room. I think I was shirtless and check my phone. On my break. I had a message from my agents saying call me back right away. You're to lead the new Paramount movie and you have to go to Canada tomorrow. I was like, cool, I'll call you back after my shift, and he said, you don't have a shift anymore, go home and start packing I up and to quit. Franzizi said that James Franco was in consideration for the role, but it is not known if he was the guy who was canned, but again, coming to a read through and mumbling your way through with your nose in the script sounds like a Franco move. Yes. Daniel Francis, who played Damnien, told this story in Altitude magazine. He said that quote the other actor had shaved and he didn't take his hat off. He was really playing it cool. People kept coming over to him, like, you know, you should really take your hat off, and then right after the table read he got fired. I don't about you. That stinks of Franco. Franco. While Bennett may not have been the first choice for Aaron, the actor did tell Huffington Post that Faye told him at one point he got the gig because he bore a striking resemblance to Phase, former Weekend Update co anchor and Jordan's personal nemesis, Jimmy Fallon. Boo, folks, if you will tune into our last episode? Was it the last episode t r L Yeah? Yeah, our last episode for that important piece of Jordan's personal lore installed my date when I was a freshman in college and she was also a freshman in college, I might add. Bennett told Cosmo UK they spent more time on my hair than they did with some of the girls. The first shot of me in the movie when you see my character for the first time in that turnaround close up. I was sent back to hair and makeup for them to do my hair more. The director would say, it's got to be smoother and more buttery. Just say that one closer to the mica. Every time I want you to redo a line, I'm gonna tell you it's gonna be smoother and more buttery. Smoother and more buttery. It's in my ears, It's in my ears. Bennett grew close to Daniel Franzizi. He was playing Damian, with Daniel telling Cosmo Uk. Jonathan and I had confided in each other that we were gay, so we were able to be comfortable. That is adorable and despite the Lord Michael's Tina fe connection. The studio was learly about casting too many SNL names, so getting Amy Poehler and Tim Meadows cast as Regina's mom and Principal Duval, respectively, was an uphill battle, and Anagastaire as Katie's mom. Yes, the studio quote had been burned on some Saturday Night live movies that had come from Lorne, so they didn't want many Saturday Night Live actors and mean Girl. Mark Waters told Vulture, make Lord feel we can't have too many of your people because they give our movies a bad reputation. He said that it might feel like an SNL movie and people might shy away from it. I mean this is coming after you know, The Ladies Man night at the Roxbury Roxbury Yeah, uh, superstar superstars Okay, Um, they made The Ladies Man and they thought Tim Meadows is not a movie star. But I was very adamant about it. I didn't know this. The cast Tim Meadows is wearing in that movie is real. He broke his wrist immediately before they started shooting and was afraid he would have to drop out. And then it was just like, well, right in a joke about it, you're having carpet tunnel syndrome. Amy Poehler was only seven years older than Rachel McAdams at the time, and she could only fly into shoot for half days because she was still working on SNL. But she contributed a ton to the film, including Kevin Napoor's rap That's an Amy Poehler original rap. Amy coached him on how to do the rap, and she actually gave him some of the moves and breography for it. Mark Water still Vulture. The guy who plays Kevin Rajeev Surrendra, was a last minute casting choice. That character was initially written as Korean, but according to Waters, and this is a quote, we couldn't find an Asian actor in Toronto who is good enough to play him. And then the Sri Lankan kid comes in and does it and we were like, okay, we're gonna rewrite it. He's Kevin Napoor now, he says. He also initially auditioned for the part of Damien. I read yeah, and he and Richard McAdams bonded because they were the only Vancouver Vancouver kids there or than an early version of The Mean Girls script had Kevin g as a drug dealer who sold you to his classmates, but then the pills were confiscated by Tina Fey's character. And then when tinack Phae's character gets accused of being a pusher in the Burned Book, cops come and find Kevin's drugs in her desk and she almost gets arrested, but then Damien, for some reason takes the heat. I don't know, I don't I don't like that ending the first draft I do Yeah. Polar also ad libbed the part where her character starts dancing along with the Plastics during their jingle bell rock scene, which was well get another scene that was toned down for to get her PG thirteen rating. Uh, And then for the scene where the dog starts going to town on her on her fake boobs. Rachel McAdams told e W that they pinned a piece of Cocktail Wiener into Amy Poehler's bra. She said, I thought this dog was going to tear her apart. It was very effective. She was such a pro through it. She's trying to do her lines and being so professional, and this dog is chomping on her fake boob. I'll never forget that. Lastly, the guy who played the aforementioned Glenn Coco, he apparently wasn't even supposed to be in the film at all. In fact, he emphatically was turned down for it. Actor David Real told Days Digital, I actually auditioned for a different part in the movie. I didn't get it. What happened was they ended up filming a lot of the school stuff right across the park from my artment in Toronto. One day. I sort of wandered onto the set to see if I could watch some scenes being shot and maybe get some free food. I sort of hung around with the background performers and ended up getting lunch because everybody just assumed I was actually hired to be there. At one point, the director recognized me from my audition and as a Constellation Prize said something like, Hey, I'm gonna put you right in the front of this next scene, and you'll have a name and everything. I never signed anything, and so I was never paid. But the free lunch was great. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information and just a moment. I mean, Girls was shot in two thousand three, with Toronto standing in for Evanston, Illinois. I had grown up with all the John Hughes movies. Tina told the Chicago Tribune in two thousand nineteen. That was American High School to me, the Chicago suburbs. I was living in New York when I wrote the movie, but it never occurred to me to set it there anymore than it occurred to me to set it where I was from. She's from outside of Philly. I said it where American High School movies are from Tina Fe moved to Chicago fresh out of college at UVA in Charlottesville. She would stay in Chicago for five years before moving to New York to follow the time honored Second City to SNL. Pipeline Jorda a quick primer on Second City for people who aren't from the century that that was relevant in I guess, I guess it's still relevant relevant. Yeah. I mean, it's the comedy incubator of the Midwest. I mean, so many SNL superstars went through there. I think also Steve Correll and Colbert went through their Chris Farley went through their Bill Murray and I think several of his brothers went through there. I believe Gilda. Yeah, I mean, it's just so many incredible people went through there. Yeah. I went to a show there once. It was hilarious. Really, this would have been in like two thousand four five, and I oh, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah, college choice and yeah, although I don't, I didn't. I don't have like a program or anything, so I can't like see if there were anyone I actually saw had gone on to be an SNL. But there's a conceivable chance. Yes, um oh who Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Eugene Levy, Katherine O'Hara, Tim Meadows, Colin Mockery, Ryan Styles, Mike Myers, Jordan Peel, Amy Polo and t Na f a Ex Cicily Strong, Adie Bryant. I mean, these are just the first names at the very top of the Second City Wikipedia page. It's pretty amazing. Harold Ramos, Gilradner, John Candy Who. Yeah. Tina Fey's first day job when she got to Chicago was the early morning shift at the magaw Y m c A in Evanston. I never set foot in neither of the actual high schools, being as I was childless adult back then, she told the Tribune. But I knew Evanston and I knew the North Shore. Despite that, virtually all of Me and Girls was filmed in and around Toronto at Toby Coke a Collegiate Institute, and Atby Coke Atobicoke a Tobacco Tobacco when im yeah, far up Atobico Collegiate Institute stood in for the girls. High school and exterior scenes. The math competition was filmed inside Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto. In the scene immediately following the competitions. The actors like Loan and t f A are seen standing on King's College Circle with the historic University College in the background. The mall frequented by characters where Lizzie Kaplan's character works is Sherway Gardens in Toronto's West End. And there are two Canadian celebrities of the time cameoing the film, Avril Levine and Selene Bond via posters bedroom walls, So that that counts, right. I just kind of imagine that Celine Dion ever was like poster level fame. Oh do you not know? Yeah, dude, heart Will Gone Era. Well, no, I'm okay, that's not true, and less about her fame and more of just like the type of personality who was on a poster. Yeah, I guess that's fair. Going into like a like a Midwestern like Hesher's Bed, German Reeking of Bong Water and right up next to like Grand Funk and metallicas Celine Dion. It's like the led Zeppelin picture of them on the plane. And then yeah, Bob Marley and legend, what's all, the what's all? The dorm room, the Sublime, the Sublime, one forty to Freedom and then Selindion maybe the pulp fiction one of the all the all time college dorm room poster hits John Belushi with a sweatshirt that says college on it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and Seline Dion d n f A later told Entertainment Weekly, we all stayed in the same hotel at the time. I was coming back and forth from SNL a lot from New York. I don't remember if I was weird about flying or if it was the timing, but sometimes I would do SNL. Then I would get in a Winnebago at two in the morning and be driven to Toronto. It was so stupid. They only had forty two days to shoot this movie on a twenty two million dollar budget, which ain't a lot. Director Mark Waters told Cosmo UK the movie didn't have that auspicious feeling when we started. We were making a movie for a relatively low budget in a studio that was in the middle of making some very high profile, expensive movies. They didn't really pay attention to what we were doing. They were like, Okay, great, you guys, go off to shoot in Toronto. Shooting was complicated by the fact that it's star Lindsay Lohan, was just sixteen at the time and therefore had her hours limited. Wow, I forgot she was that young. Because Lindsay was a minor at the time, we actually had a real struggle finding time to choreograph the Talent Show dance routine. Mark Waters told the w We hired a Corey bographer and it was going to be a much more elaborate dance. But then because we couldn't book the time with Lindsay ended up being a little more rough shod and a little messier than we were intending. But that ended up being the greatest thing. Absolutely. Yeah, Like it looks like a real lip sync. And also I guess the scene arrived at jingle Bell Rock kind of as a last ditch effort. Mark Waters solely w you'd be surprised how hard it is to license Christmas songs. I didn't even know how many things we tried before we got the rights to the jingle Bell Rock. We were just happy to have anybody say yes. Imagine if it was like a wonderful Christmas time. I mean it must have. I mean, I'm sure the number one was all I want for Christmas. You it must have been yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And Mariah says no, not until Love actually Love actually came out. I think like four or five months before Mean Girls, So maybe Mariah and she's like, sorry, just slicened it out so I could add something to do with it. Um. Another scene complicated by Lowen's age was the four way phone call scene. Waters told Vulture, Lindsay was still a minor when we shot the movie, so and we only had about nine hours of shooting time with her. UM. So he had to shoot all of the actresses separately and composite together UM and achieve that all the masterful comic timing of that scene basically through deceit. He said. The trick behind it was that I shot everything at forty eight frames per second, which is basically a slow motion rate, but we recorded sinc sound, so in the editing room I could play it back at twenty four frames per second and have the characters talking like normal. But when then they when they're listening. If I needed to mess with the time compression, I'd slip into slow motion. Your eye goes to the person who's talking, but for the people who aren't talking, unless they're doing some sort of vigorous activity, you won't notice if it goes into slow motion for a little bit and that neat. That's really interesting. Yeah, movie Magic. Most of the cast were older than Lohan, but not that old. Amanda say for you to just graduated high school. Lacy Ship turned twenty one while they were filming, Lizzie Kaplan was twenty two, Daniel Franzes he was one of the oldest at twenty six, and Jonathan Bennett was twenty three. Raggie's Surrender was actually younger than Lindsay Low and he was fifteen years old, but he was in the lead, so he obviously didn't have as much to do. Uh. Tinafe was thirty three when she wrote this. Uh. And in case you wanted to feel bad about what you've accomplished lately over the years. The one question I'm asked the most is if Lindsay is nice. Reggieves Surrendra said she is and was. She was one of the youngest people on set. She was sixteen years old, so I had to be tutored, have a chaperone, and had restricted working hours. She was very well respected for being professional and was capable of doing excellent work. This is really interesting to me and I'm so glad you found this. There were some interviews with the film's wardrobe and costume designer Mary Jane Ford. She was talking to Nylon in about her specific vision for the fashion in this film, and she said, I wanted it to be realistic but also have a timelessness. In costom design, you need to always project a little into the future. Because in this case, the movie came out in two thousand of four, but we actually made it in two thousand three. It's something I never considered, so we had to be a little ahead of the game and look at a lot of different things. One of the first things you do when you want to go to the future in this country is you go to European fashion and see what they're doing, and then you take those colors and shapes and you try to modify it to fit a contemporary lifestyle for me and girls. We also went back into the world when women and girls actually dressed up to go to school in the fifties. Your nails were done, your hair was done, your dresses were impeccable. So it was a little bit of a combination of the future and the past to give it a contemporary feel. I just think that's really cool. Costom designer Mary Jane Ford continued, We read millions of teen magazines and looked through millions of high school yearbooks from all over the country, but real schools are not quite as glossy, and we wanted a little more gloss given the subject matter of the group. And as for the individual plastics personalities, she explained, Regina sort of told everyone else what to do within the realm of that. Gretchen was a little more demere and a little sweeter, which we sort of evoked with the cardigan, and Karen was truly the follower. She would do a little bit of either Regina or Gretchen and they would tell her what to do, and she would do it. When you put Katie into the mix and she begins to surpass Regina, it became really fun. Regina slips into her juicy warmups, which at the time was kind of couch potato week. Lindsay had the most costume changes. She added probably around fifty nine, but each one of them had over thirty changes, and of course a lot of them took the clothes home with them after filming wrapped. Fifty nine costume changes, that's wild. I don't know any where else to put this, But I always thought this was funny because I was a big fan of movie Mortal Kombat as a kid, and so the ark of the Universe returns as it must. Um. The song that plays over the closing credits of both of those movies is Uh Hallicon plus all on and On by Orbital. It's a techno dance song and because I owned the Mortal Kombat soundtrack is like nine minutes long. Yes, it's incredibly long. I recognized it instantly when I saw Mean Girls. That was like what and then learning about it. It's none of the film's official soundtrack, which is funny um because that's all like very era appropriate, like pop and pop punk adjacent stuff, But it is one of the most popular soundtrack choices of the era. When I started looking at it, I found it also appeared in Hackers, which is double whammy of being both in Mortal Kombat and Hackers. That is power Uh and the second film in Bammar Jerra's Camp Kill Yourself video series c K Y two K, the song is oh Womp Womp. The song is dedicated to the mother of one half of the production team Orbital, Paul hartn all who was addicted to the Tranquilizer houcy on for many years. So that's fun song I used to put on when I was literally ten eleven years old and had purchased the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. I think I asked for it for Christmas and received a little one boy rave. Well it was you know, the funniest thing about that soundtrack. It was like a mix of dance and industrial music and like Napalm Death is on there, so like I remember, but like going through this soundtrack, it's like I was like eleven years old listening to Eagle Eye Cherry and Semi Sonic on the radio, and then I would go and play the Mortal Kombat soundtrack and have it go from Napalm Death to this orbital song and just sit in my room and be like, this is music. I mean, it's like slightly more up tempo and really yeah oh yeah, yeah yeah, well on a less fun though, but still sort of fun. The song that Katie is eager to know at the school dance is built this way by Samantha Ronson, who she would later date for a number of years in the late two thousand's. That's that's a truly wild connection. Right, that's pretty good. As you mentioned earlier, Mean Girls opened on April four, debuting at number one at the box office. Mark Waters told Cosmo UK the week before, thirteen Going on thirty was released with Jennifer Garner, which had a much bigger budget, more of a marketing push behind it, so people thought it was going to crush us. Instead we crushed them, which was kind of surprising. We were literally tracking to make twelve million and come second the friday before we opened, and we were pleased with that because the movie didn't cost a lot to make. But then we opened with twenty five million at the box office. It blew everyone's expectations away. For sure. I didn't know it was going to be a big movie the woman who started this whole thing, author Rosalind Wiseman, told The Times. But the first time I saw Rachel in the rough cut, I could not believe how good she was. My mom was with me, and I remember turning to her and saying, I can't believe how perfectly she got every mean girl I've ever worked with. Lizzie Kaplan added, I was much more naive about the business back then. I didn't know that much about say what a good opening weekend for a teen comedy was. But when I found out they were studying the movie in sociology classes at universities, that felt pretty big. The film has on Rotten Tomatoes currently. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars in his review, writing, in a waste land of dumb movies about teenagers, Mean Girls is a smart and funny one. Shockingly, it got some bad reviews. Richard Robert called it quote only kind of funny and so that he couldn't recommend it, and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote, I would be more amused if the topic of rich material girls had not been worn to a thread elsewhere. These people are done. The movie has been lodged in best of lists of teen comedies and high school movies pretty much since its release, and it's obviously lived longest on the internet it and in the hearts and minds of its fans. Every cast member has stories about being confronted with lines from the film while they're out in public, and every Wednesday in October three you are statistically certain to run into screen grabs or gifts of the film on social media among me and girls prominent fans of the music world are Mariah carry who's two thousand nine single Obsessed begins with an interlude quote where she says, and I was like, why are you so obsessed with me? Which is, of course the line Regina George says in the movie. Ariana Grande obviously re enacted the film for her video for Thank You next In, and most recently, British band wet Leg quotes the film is your muffin buttered? Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin? In the song chaise long, let's say that in the French way, chas long. That's my father, you saying that word. You've said it a few times on this episode's is, for some reason one of my favorite bits you do. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mean Girls was ignored by the major award shows that we picked up teen Choice Awards for Lindsay Lohan in three categories and MTB Movie Awards for Lohan McAdams, and then for all four Plastics for the Best on Screen Team. This brings us to the question of why no sequels, Tina Fey told Entertainment Weekly at the time, we did want to start the conversation about the sequel, and for whatever reason, I was like, no, we shouldn't do that. Now I look back and I'm like why, But now no, it's too late now, she told Variety in eighteen. However, maybe it's better because we can save all the energy for this. With this being the aforementioned Mean Girls musical she wrote with her husband and thirty rock composer Jeff Richmond, which premiered in Washington, d C. By Washington d C. In two thousand and seventeen before opening on Broadway in aprilen. Nominated for twelve Tony Awards and nine Drama Desk Awards that year, it won Tina Fee an Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical at the Ladder And what has been no sequel ever made. There has been a film produced bearing the moniker Mean Girls Too, and this made for TV sort of sequel aired on ABC Family which is now free Form. In it was a standalone story that actually had nothing to do with the original film aside from having Tim Meadows reprises role as the school's principal. This was not well received, but Hope Springs Eternal, not least in the hearts and minds of the film stars asked by Howard Stern in March two thousand sixteen, Tina Fey said, in general, I don't know why I didn't just try to do Mean Girls too. Everyone does sequels. Then, in December of that year, Lohan told CNN that she had already written a treatment for a potential sequel. She said, I would love to have Jamie Lee, Curtis and Jimmy Fallon in the movie. I've already written a treatment. I just need a response. I know Mark Waters, the director, he'd happily come back and in Jen c Lindsay Lindsay, Jamie Lee was in the other one, was in the other movie you did, Lindsay, No come back, don't go to Greece um. In January and the Wendy Williams Show, Lohan told that host, I've harassed Tina and Lauren so many times. It's becoming a bit stalker ish. I go to SNL when I'm in town, I go to Lauren, I run to Steve Higgins. I think they're really focused on the Broadway show right now. A year later, in her Howard Stern interview, Lohan told him, I think they can't do it right now. I've spoken to Tina, but it can't happen without her and all of the cast. Sometimes you're like, it's just too soon to do it, But it's been fifteen years. I remember there being talk of I think it was Warner Brothers, a New Line Cinema doing a spinoff with Jennifer Anderson the lead back in called Mean Moms, which was based on another book by Rosalind Wiseman, But then that got held up in development hell and seems to have died. Maybe Rosalind Wiseman was still pissed by getting burned from Mean Girls, and she killed it. I don't know. In April, but none of us had anything else on our minds Loewan was once again asked about Mean Girls Too by David Spade and confessed that she'd been hanging onto the idea of coming back to that project for a really long time, but that it was out of her hands to work with Tina Fee and the whole crew again and Mark Waters. That was really what I wanted, she said. I was excited to do that, but that's all in their hands. Really. Oh, I'm crashing and burning here. A few days later, Rachel McAdams also expressed interest in reprising her role in a sequel, after having declared in previous years that she would be up for it as long as Faye and was on board. She said, Tina was our master in chief on this one, so if she's into it, then I'm into it. That's not Rachel, Rachel. That's not a term. No, it's master or commander and chief. You can't do both. I know they don't have either in Canada, but now maybe you don't know that. Maybe they have that. That's a position on the mountains or in rush Um. In August of two, Daniel Fronses talked on the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast with David Yomteff about a potential sequel reboot. He said, I would absolutely love it, and I would do it in any form whatsoever. I mean, I want to do a whole movie with the whole cast. People would love that. You know, Tina PHE's got that power and she ain't pulling the trigger. So I don't know who else could do it. But considering the milestone coming up, he continued, I've been trying to write something now that has all of us in it. I think that within a year I could pitch it and you know it'll be fun. We're approaching the twentieth anniversary. What a great time to start something like that. A few months later, when of Tina Fey's told us and l Buddies made a direct appeal to Tina herself. Asked by Jimmy Fallon in November two about Mean Girls Too, Lizzie Lohan answered, I think that's in Tina PHE's hands and Lauren Michael's and Jimmy turned directly into the camera and said, Tina, I know you're watching. Let's make that happen, which is the best thing that Jimmy Fallon has ever done, and said basically, he didn't break when he delivered that got him. Uh So, the very last or at least most recent word that I could find about this was for a December two feature an Interview magazine where Amanda say Fried and Lindsay Lohan discussed the sequel. Say Fried said I would kill to do just one week all of us playing our own roles on Mean Girls on Broadway. She was talking about the musical because she said, Mean Girls two is never going to happen, is it? And low End responded, I don't know. I heard something about it being a movie musical, and I was like, oh, no, we can't do that. It has to be the same tone, say Freed continued. Anyway, Tina is busy, she'll get around to it. So that is the final word for now. There are treatments by Lindsay Lohan and Daniel Franzies out there, but everyone says the balls in your court, Tina Fe, everyone is game. Well. Mean Girls has obviously resoned with so many because despite its caustic dressing, it has a good heart. And I think, aside from its obvious quotability and instant time capsule vibes as you say, that's why it stuck so deeply in the pop culture. From him and Tina, Fe told The New York Times Rosalind wanted the movie to be positive, and I remember promising her that that was the goal, to have a positive core, and damn it, it does. Stephanie Drummond, who played Bethany Byrd, the character with the aforementioned wideseat Vagina, told Cosmo. I remember eating lunch with Tina and Amy as I was one of the only supporting actors on set that day. We had really good conversations because Tina had written us she was so invested in us, it didn't ever feel divisive. I've been on set afterwards that were far more divisive. I still talked to pretty much everyone from Mean Girls Jonathan Bennett played Aaron Samuel's told Cosmo, I talked to Lindsay yesterday, I talked to Tina recently. I talked to Lacy and Daniel all the time. Jan Carana right help me, jan Core wanna my mom, and Emma and the Corona, who plays one of the girls referred to as the girls who eat their feelings told Cosmo uk I remember being putting that group in the canteen was a little hard because nobody wants to be known as that person. You have to remember you're doing a job. But at the same time, it did just make me feel a little bit like, oh, this is what I am right now. Later in the movie, my character calls Regina George a fat ass, which is a bit of a come uppance for her and a victory for Emma. But the genius of Tina Phay's that later in the film, she basically says, you can't make yourself feel better by making other people feel worse. That is a perfect message. I looked at the earlier canteen scene like this moment is for a greater good. Because I knew how the movie was going to end, with a message to stop judging women. I was okay, I didn't feel exploited, and nobody ever made me feel bad. May we all, even the meanest queen bee among us, be so lucky or at very least, may all over enemies get struck by a bus when they least expected. Thank you for listening, folks, This has been too much information. I'm Alex Heagle and I'm Jordan Runtalg. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.