The ‘Mean Girls’ musical film almost included its original four leading ladies. Actress-comedian Tina Fey confirmed that there were talks about getting Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Lacey Chabert to play small roles in the new film.
“We’ll never know,” said Fey when asked what their roles would’ve looked like in the film, reports People magazine.
In an interview with The New York Times, the actress said: “They’re busy people, so it didn’t come together, but we tried, and we all love each other.”
Fey wrote the original screenplay and starred alongside the ensemble cast as maths teacher Ms Norbury. She reprised her role in the new film and wrote its screenplay.
As per People, her appeal to revisit the 2004 film, which also spawned a Broadway show, came from a state of gratitude.
“I have other things that I’d like to do. But I have so much gratitude that this movie seemed to stick with people,” she said. “When I look at it, I am reminded of how hard I worked on it in the first place. I feel like the bricks and mortar of it were the absolute best possible job I was capable of at the time. It’s not perfect, but it holds water.”
However, when asked if she would ever work on a sequel that brought back the original cast to play their characters as adults, she said that she has not really “thought much about that.”
“To me, part of why the stakes are so high in the story is because everyone’s so young and feelings are huge, love is huge and friendship is huge in a way (that it isn’t with) middle-age moms. I love writing about middle-aged people, but I don’t know,” she told the outlet.
Rachel, who played Regina George in the original, confirmed that she was interested in appearing in the new screen adaptation while speaking to Variety in December. She said, “Tina (Fey) and I sort of dabbled with a few ideas, but it was tough to make it all work in the end.”
She also addressed why she didn’t appear with Lohan, Seyfried and Chabert in November’s Mean Girls-inspired Walmart commercial. “I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest. I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag”, Rachel said. The ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ star noted that she also “didn’t know that everyone” was participating in the ad.