For Mean Girls, the movie musical remake of the beloved 2004 comedy, director Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne went back to high school. Literally.
The film was shot on location at a shuttered all girl Catholic school in New Jersey. In lieu of trailers, talent — which includes Rene Rapp, Angourie Rice, Tina Fey, Auli’i Cravalho, and Jaquel Spivey — would partition off classrooms, while production offices were in homeroom, and the COVID compliance team posted up the old nurse’s office.
“We tried to make it feel like a camp,” Perez tells The Hollywood Reporter of the set-up. “Especially, with so much pressure that they were putting on themselves from the cultural zietgiest. We wanted to keep it safe and happy and just positive.”
Any pressure stems from the realities of re-imagining the beloved comedy written by Fey that, among certain demographics, barreled towards cult classic status in record time with instantly recognizable one-liners. The original starred Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams and follows teenager Cady as she makes the transition from Kenya, where she was homeschooled, to a traditional American high school where she is adopted into the popular clique, know as “the plastics.” The 2024 incarnation is based on the Broadway musical adaptation of the film.
Perez and Jayne, who make their feature debut with Mean Girls after a long background in music videos, talk to THR about remaking the comedy, incorporating iPhones into the movie, and dreaming of casting Harry Styles as Glen Coco.
How did you come on to the project?
SAMANTHA JAYNE Tina’s producing partner reached out to us, curious about what our take would be on the script. They had seen [FX series] Quarter Life Poetry. It’s funny because I didn’t like really see the correlation between quarter life poetry and Mean Girls, but then you go about it and it’s about exploding the inner world of this girl outward and experiencing her inner reality, visually. So we went: “Oh, actually, this does make sense.”
ARTURO PEREZ JR. When we cracked this, I think everything started to explode inside our brains. In the original construction of the Broadway play, Damian and Janice [played in the movie by Cravalho and Spivey] are your narrators. We were like, well, if they’re the narrator’s what if they’re also the directors and it’s their film. We wanted it to feel like they were the directors of this movie, and wanted their art freak-ness to be palpable.
JAYNE All the ideas kind of stemmed from there. If they truly are the directors, and they’re 16 and they only have the resources that they have, how would they bring like a troupe of kids together to tell the story. They would bring in the school band and the choir girls and dancers that you would revisit throughout the film, almost like a Greek chorus.
The movie incorporates phone screens and social media. What was the thinking behind this?
JAYNE We tried to use it a few different ways. We didn’t try to make it all violent bullying and bad, but in the many ways that kids use their phones. Gen Z and kids in high school, now, are all creators. They make their own films, and they make them really well and they only use their phones. We wanted to speak that language and move the camera with that fluidity like one can move an iPhone. There were a lot of conversations about where do we draw the line. We don’t want to overdo it with phones, we don’t want to use it for the sake of just using it, saying, “Hey, we know you kids use phones!” We wanted it to push the story forward.
Gen Z social media has its own unique language and visual style. Did you do research ahead of filming?
PEREZ I kept in touch with my high school theater teacher because he had such an impact on my life. I was like, “Hey, would it be cool if we go back and just talk to the kids? We’ll do like a couple like acting exercises and monologue trading, and maybe we could ask them some questions.” At the beginning, they were very shy and told the stock answers that you would expect, probably what they tell their parents it’s like. Then, after three days, they go: “This is what it’s really like. This is how it really feels.” That’s what this movie attempts to do, we want to make you feel the way these moments feel in high school.
JAYNE You forget when you’re out of high school. We were there for a three-day workshop and there was this one girl and she was so bubbly and bright, and then one day she was sobbing. My mind went, “Something must have happened at home.” I asked her and she’s like, “My boyfriend broke up with me.”‘ I was like, fuck, man that will ruin your entire day.
PEREZ Your entire month!
JAYNE It’s these really big emotions that we wanted to take seriously. The movie is of course fun and comedic, but we wanted to validate the real feelings of young women because I feel it’s not done with enough respect, especially cinematically.
How did you decide what to keep from the original film?
JAYNE There’s certain comedy that that flew and was funny 20 years ago, that just doesn’t fly today. We all knew that. But there are certain iconic lines where we would joke that there would be riots in the streets if it wasn’t in there. Like “You go, Glen Coco!”‘ Give the people what they want. Give me what I want! But when we were like, “Who’s Glen Coco?”
PEREZ Who can it be? I remember us going, could we ask, like Harry Styles?
JAYNE We were like Harry Styles could be Glen Coco! Then we were like, hold on, we love to break the fourth wall: What if we are all Glen Coco? So, after 20 years, we can all feel like Glen Coco. [Editor’s note: The line is delivered straight to camera, as if the audience is Glen Coco.]
What were the songs in the movie that you each, personally, felt you had to get right?
JAYNE “Revenge Party.” Some songs deepen character, and some songs move story along. This does both. It extends over three months of the school year and, at the beginning, Cady is innocent and then by the end she is getting comfy being a plastic.
PEREZ For me, because I really associate myself with Janice, it’s “I’d Rather Be Me”. Because that’s the message of the film, and it’s such a good message. And Janice [who sings it] would be so critical of it, making sure you got everything just right. It’s all one take and, of course it had to be, because Janice would say, ‘Follow me and don’t you dare cut.’
JAYNE It took a lot of like lots of rehearsal. Because the schedule was so tight everything really needed to be pre-planned. We shot everything on our phone beforehand. It was us and our DP and our assistant acting out the entire movie. We has our first AD Colin, who is this Irish dude from Boston, being the stand-in for Cady.
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