Tina Fey Once Revealed How Her Mom Helped Inspire Regina George in ‘Mean Girls’
Actor Tina Fey drew inspiration from her own life when adapting Mean Girls for the big screen. She even based the series’ most sinister villain partly on her mother.
What Tina Fey’s mom had in common with Rachel McAdams’ Regina George
Fey sprinkled a little bit of her own life into the 2004 comedy Mean Girls. The film was loosely based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, which Fey felt had an interesting premise for her feature. The idea for the adaptation grew into a story about a girl from Africa transferring to a Suburban high school ruled by a clique. Apart from the book, Fey used her own high school experience to inform the material.
“Conversations that I remember. People that I kinda knew in High School. Shoved in on all different spots,” she once told Black Film.
A lot of the people she met became the basis for Rachel McAdams’ Regina George, who was the movie’s ruthless and iconic villain. But one of Regina’s signature scenes in the movie came from a habit that Fey’s mom used to have.
“Regina is the most amalgamated,” Fey said. “One of Regina’s big moves in the movie is actually based on my mom. 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’. That is actually the closest to a real inspiration for the movie.”
Tina Fey regretted not writing a ‘Mean Girls’ sequel
Fey believed that Mean Girls worked best as a standalone, which was an opinion that many shared. Although there were many who tried to convince Fey to revisit Mean Girls in a potential sequel. Fey wouldn’t budge, only for the studio behind the flick, Paramount, to do a Mean Girls sequel, anyway. Mean Girls 2 was a made-for-TV movie released on ABC Family. It was a huge ratings hit, but received mostly negative reviews.
Fey asserted that she had nothing to do with the sequel.
“It’s funny, because now it’s shooting and I don’t really have anything to do with it,” Fey once told Movieline (via Digital Spy). “I haven’t read it or anything like that. Paramount was very generous and solicitous with me for several years, saying, ‘Would you like to do it?’ And at the time, I was like, ‘They should just let it be what it is!’”
However, the sequel made Fey reconsider her original decision.
“Now, its like, why not just do it? I should have done it, because now it’s happening anyway,” Fey said.
Rachel McAdams almost had a role in Tina Fey’s new ‘Mean Girls’ musical
Actor Rachel McAdams seriously considered revisiting the world of Mean Girls with Tina Fey. Although Fey didn’t make a direct sequel, she was heavily involved in the Broadway musical of Mean Girls. The musical adaptation recently made it to the big screen, with a couple of familiar faces appearing in the movie. McAdams was interested in a cameo, but she and Fey couldn’t seem to make the timing work.
“Tina and I sort of dabbled with a few ideas, but it was tough to make it all work in the end,” McAdams told Variety. “I was really down for whatever she wanted to do. I think the direction it went in will be fantastic and I cannot wait to see it.”
McAdams also shared why she didn’t reunite with her Mean Girls co-stars for a Walmart commercial that featured her old clique.
“I don’t know; I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest. A movie sounded awesome, but I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag. Also…I didn’t know that everyone was doing it. I would, of course, always love to be part of a ‘Mean Girls’ reunion and hang with my plastics, but yeah, I found that out later,” McAdams said.
