For the 10 year anniversary of Mean Girls, the main cast reunited for a photo shoot and sat down with Entertainment Weekly reporter Tim Stack to reflect on the film's production, the article releasing online on Wednesday.
The photo shoot brought together again Tina Fey, who wrote and starred in the movie, along with Lindsey Lohan, who starred as the film's protagonist Cady Heron, Rachel McAdams, the film's antagonist Regina George and Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried as Regina's cohorts Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith respectively. Fey starred as Ms. Norbury, Cady's math teacher.
Sitting down with Stack, each of the cast members reflected on the beginnings of the filming process. Fey was still writing for Saturday Night Live at the time of the movie's production, saying she became inspired to write the screenplay after reading Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction book Queen Bees & Wannabes.
"When I first pitched it to Lorne [Michaels, SNL and Mean Girl's producer], I was thinking I’d like to write a movie about what they call 'relational aggression' among girls," Fey said. "He was like, 'Okay, but could they also still have cool cars and cool clothes?' And I was like, 'Oh, for sure!'"
When it came to casting the roles, Fey had her own troubles, but found her cast in Lohan and McAdams.
"I wanted to play Regina," Lohan confessed. "I had just played—in Confessions [of a Teenage Drama Queen] and Freaky [Friday] —not the cool girl in school. I was still 17 years old and I wanted to be the cool girl on set."
Mark Waters, Mean Girls director, then influenced Lohan to reconsider the role of Cady.
"I had a war with him," Lohan said. "And he goes, 'No, Cady is the heroine, and that’s who you are.'"
Fey questioned whether Lohan should have been cast as Regina before production, to which Waters influenced Fey in a way like he did with Lohan by describing Cady's character, saying that she gets to turn into Regina throughout the film.
"You work backward from that and you cast her as Cady," Fey said. "Knowing she could get to that point of being Regina, but you let her be the innocent side, too."
Remembering some key moments during production, Seyfried and McAdams mentioned the time when Parks and Recreations's Amy Poehler, who played McAdams' mother, had to act through a scene where her character's dog was chewing on her fake boob.
"They, like, pinned a piece of a cocktail wiener into her bra," McAdams explained of achieving the scene with Poehler. "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."
Even after 10 years, the cast sees how much love the film is with people.
"I was staying at a bed-and-breakfast recently in the-middle-of-nowhere Ireland," McAdams said. "And one of the owners’ granddaughters came up to me, and she gave me a piece of pink paper and she goes, 'Can you write down just a few of your favorite Mean Girls quotes?' It was so sweet. I couldn’t think of any of them! It’s been 10 years! So I said, 'Well, what are your favorites?' So she literally fed me all these lines, like 'Is butter a carb?'"
Fey also explained the name behind Glenn Cocco, a background character featured in the film who is mentioned in one of the film's most memorable quotes "You go Glenn Cocco."
"I tried to use real names in writing because it’s just easier," Fey explained. "My older brother’s good friend is Glenn Cocco. He’s a film editor in Los Angeles, and I imagine it’s a pain in the butt for him. Someone said to me you could buy a shirt at Target that says 'You go, Glenn Cocco!' That was unexpected."
Lohan said that Mariah Carey and she have the same make-up artist, saying that Carey loves the movie.
"Whenever I see her, she does always say, 'On Wednesdays, I wear pink,'" Lohan added.
Mean Girls premiered on April 20, 2004 in the United States and also starred SNL alums Tim Meadows and Ana Gasteyer. The film was adapted in 2010 into a Nintendo DS video game and had a follow-up movie in the ABC Family-produced Mean Girls 2 in 2011.
Image courtesy of INFGoff.com