Transcript: Culture Chat — Mean Girls, old and new

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture Chat — Mean Girls, old and new’

Lilah Raptopoulos
This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. This week we are talking about Mean Girls, in theatres now, which is a musical based on the 2004 teen movie classic starring Lindsay Lohan and written by Tina Fey. The original film was a phenomenon. Mean Girls has been called one of the most quotable movies of all time. You have probably heard the phrases, ‘On Wednesdays we wear pink.’ ‘She doesn’t even go here.’

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘MEAN GIRLS’ PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
It was so popular that in 2018, a musical adaptation came out on Broadway, and then that did so well that they released in theatres now a film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the 2004 movie. It has a very similar script as the original and songs from the Broadway show. So today we are talking about the Mean Girls phenomenon, what the original movie’s legacy is, and whether we need this new version. Let’s get into it. I am Lilah. My hair is full of secrets. Joining me in New York is Brooke Masters. She’s the FT’s US financial editor, and for her, the limit does not exist. Hi, Brooke. Welcome.

Brooke Masters
Hi.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Also with us from London, she’s wearing sweatpants, so she can’t sit with us. It is producer of the Life and Art podcast and occasional guest host, Lulu Smyth. Hi, Lulu.

Lulu Smyth
Hi, sweatpants and all, that’s me right now.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Mean Girls, as a refresher for listeners, Brooke, how would you describe what happens in the original film?

Brooke Masters
Basically, Lindsay Lohan’s character, Cady, comes from having been homeschooled while living in Kenya to your basic, average American high school in Illinois and discovers the horror of life with cliques. And it’s all about her navigating all these different groups and trying to fit in. And you know, there’s the requisite romance plot but basically girls being absolutely horrible to each other.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so let’s meet the main characters. So there’s the protagonist, Cady. There are the mean girls, which are called, the Plastics. That’s, Regina George, who’s the queen bee? And, please jump in.

Brooke Masters
Gretchen Wiener, who is, one of the mean girls. And then Karen.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Karen’s the dumb one. Gretchen is the gossip. So before we get into more detail about the movie, I would love to ask more about both of your relationship with the original. I kind of love that we’re in different, we’re coming to this from different generations. When it came out, I was a freshman in high school, sort of facing a 2000-person public high school kind of like that one and thinking I’m such a loser, I don’t really know how to ingratiate, and feeling like, wow, there really are mean girls in this town. What about you, Lulu?

Lulu Smyth
Yeah, I think I first saw it when I was, like 12, but sort of forgot about it, and then it came back when I was like 15, and suddenly everyone was rewatching it. It was everywhere. They were all, like, quoting it and without irony.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh no, they were taking the wrong experience.

Lulu Smyth
Truly. Yeah. And I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s kind of something that happens sometimes with these kinds of films where, like, the potential for people to misinterpret it is, like, quite high. But yeah, it was definitely, like, a massive part of my teenage years as well. This and Anchorman are the films I remember people posting all the time.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Brooke, what about you?

Brooke Masters
For me, the movie came out just as I was parenting a little girl who was actually being tortured by mean girls in nursery school. So it was incredibly powerful. I actually even read the self-help book on which it was originally based, which is called Queen Bees. And so in that way, seeing it live on screen brought to life was really just so much fun.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And what did you both love about the original?

Lulu Smyth
I mean I think the bottom line is that it’s really funny and it has this like savage, unrestrained comedy to it, which I think is very like satisfying if you’re a teenager. But also it’s, I think, a film that has a really compelling plot, like obviously it’s quite formulaic, but there are lots of like twists and turns that happen. But the thing that’s kind of eclipsed it now is the one-liners and the kind of throwaway characters and the fleshed-out world, which makes it very . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Eternal?

Lulu Smyth
Yeah. Timeless.

Brooke Masters
I mean, I loved the original Mean Girls, and what made the first movie so powerful is not just that the characters are great and the jokes are fantastic and the lines are brilliantly written, but it was really biting. I think it also, it’s a bit like Casablanca that way, where each individual character, even though you don’t see that much of them, is really fleshed out and that’s in some ways that conveys its underlying message, which is that everybody has value. And, you know, although there are these mean girls in charge, everybody else has value to, and by giving each one of them a really existence. That’s really powerful.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right, right. First of all, I love that you’re comparing it to Casablanca. I wonder if Mean Girls has ever been compared to Casablanca. That’s amazing. Yeah, I agree. Also, like, at that time, Lindsay Lohan was in her absolute prime. I don’t, she had The Parent Trap had come out, Freaky Friday had come out. She was like very relatable and talented. And the movie, as I remember it, it was like, it was really smart. And it was also dark in ways that would, like, surprise you. Like, there are a lot of ways where you thought you were going to get a typical thing, and then, it would be like deeply inappropriate. And that was like very titillating. I felt like for that time, it felt like it was doing something different. One line that I use still, is, you know, Gretchen Wiener towards the beginning keeps saying, that’s so fetch. And she’s like, I’ll make this line happen. And at one point, Regina just turns there and it says, like, Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen. And I think that that encapsulates something that continues to happen to me regularly, which is like, stop trying to make this thing happen every like, especially in media, stop trying to make this sort of become a trend. It’s not a trend. That I think about all the time.

Lulu Smyth
There are so many, lines. Like, even like, Four for you, Glen Coco, you go Glen Coco. Glen Coco doesn’t exist out of that outside of those nine words. And yet he is like somehow a cultural phenomenon.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘MEAN GIRLS’ PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Before we move on to the next, is there anything that we should say about, like, why that movie hit so well then?

Brooke Masters
|I think it does, Mean Girls comes in the period where we’re people, where women film-goers in particular are beginning to say, like, why are we always the side life? The movie’s always about the guy. And or you know it and we’re the sidekick or where maybe we get five minutes. And this was a movie absolutely about women, mean young women, but women.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And not about love. I mean, it was I guess there was a romance plot at the end, but it was also about like young women being able to be more things than one, like able to be nerds and also popular.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Let’s talk about the new 2024 film. So, like the original, the musical follows Cady’s tumultuous journey to fit in at high school and try to undermine Regina George. But the film is also a musical, so that’s part of what makes it feel new is the music. This is a totally new song book. It’s written by Jeff Richmond, who is the husband of Tina Fey. Very top line. What did you both think of it?

Lulu Smyth
I mean, I just want to say on record, like, I have a lot of nice things to say about this film, but the song book is a crime. It is an abomination.

Brooke Masters
Awful.

Lulu Smyth
It is a stain on the legacy of being girls and Tina Fey. I’m sorry, Jeff, but I don’t know what you’re thinking. Imagine being given, like, the literary masterpiece that is the Mean Girls 2004 script on a platter and coming up with, I can be who I want to be, I’m sexy.

[AUDIO CLIP OF ‘MEAN GIRLS’ OST PLAYING]

Lulu Smyth
And maybe this is my producer brain talking, but all it needed was like a light edit to make that into poetry that it deserved to be. And yeah, he did not pull through. But what did you guys think of it?

Brooke Masters
I absolutely hated the songs. Really, like, not singable, not memorable. Also like candy pop songs sung by people with musical theatre voices, like that combo. You know, I imagine, like Taylor Swift would have had so much fun with this. It could have been so much better.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Totally. OK, so what were some of the big differences in this film compared to the original? I mean, one thing I notice is there’s a lot more technology, like, when the burn book is sort of disseminated in the original, Regina George uses photocopied papers of the pages and throws them around the hallways. And that looks so quaint now. Now, the contents of the burn book are being passed around, via Snapchat, I would imagine, on social networks.

Brooke Masters
Yeah. Or Instagram or something.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Or Instagram. Yeah.

Brooke Masters
And the phone conversations, you know, the multi-person phone conversations have shifted to become, you know, people are texting each other and there are, you know, TikTok videos. And they clearly have tried to incorporate sort of how much kids live online these days. More of the scenes are framed as being you’re clearly looking at someone’s smartphone or looking at several smartphones at the same time.

Lulu Smyth
Yeah, there’s a lot of them, what I spoke to our deputy arts editor about this, he referred to as social media screen candy, which he said gave him a headache. Whereas for me, I was like, I guess my brain is already so rotted by sugar and the Instagram content. And I was like, woo hoo, fun!

Lilah Raptopoulos
But what did you guys think overall? Like, did those changes do it for you? Do you think it was as biting? Was it missing something?

Brooke Masters
I think when it is following the original most slavishly, it is less impressive. It’s better when it’s trying to do something different. Really taking advantage of being a musical and doing interesting stuff. I think part of the problem is most of the actors, while they are really good, they don’t have the edge that the actors in the original had, you know, particularly the Lindsay Lohan Cady character and the Rachel McAdams Regina character, they’re a bit softer. They all kind of blend into each other more.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, it’s funny, I actually, I agree that the actress that played Cady, Angourie Rice, just didn’t have the weight that Lindsay Lohan did, but I really liked Renee Rapp’s version of Regina George. And I have a theory, and I’m going to run it by both of you. And you can take your time with it, you know. Basically my thought is that the original Regina George, Rachel McAdams, she played Regina as, like, the perfect mean girl. Right? She’s this kind of distant, beautiful, sort of pricked you with her sort of evilness. But she wore her power kind of more lightly. And then Renee Rapp’s Regina George was, like, she felt to me like more powerful, stronger, like more of an evil villainess. Like she felt like an Ursula.

Lulu Smyth
That is so interesting to me because I I thought she had more, I thought she had more like, I mean, that was her public persona, but once that cracked, you really saw the kind of skeleton underneath and how vulnerable she was.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so she had a softness underneath that you saw.

Lulu Smyth
Yeah. I do agree that the original, like, she’s kind of untouchable, almost inhuman.

Lilah Raptopoulos
The other thing that I kept thinking when I was watching, Renee Rapp, I kept thinking, like, who does she remind me of? Who does she remind me of, this Regina. And I was like, oh my God, she reminds me of Donald Trump. And I felt like this Regina George, this 2024 Regina George, is she Donald Trump? She’s like kind of scary. People don’t like her, but they follow her. She has this sort of, like populist power over everybody where they don’t quite know how they’ve been manipulated, but they have. And her meanness is like brute kind of, but also funny. And I don’t know, that’s my theory. I think that this film was a commentary of today’s political landscape of a high school musical. Tell me I’m wrong now. Maybe I’m wrong.

Brooke Masters
I know I don’t think I feel Donald Trump, but the idea of a bully who actually has a bit of, has insecurity underneath, I think did come through much more strongly in this one. And I do love your Ursula comparison from Little Mermaid because there is, it is partly because of the showstopping songs. I think she’s a bit, she’s in some ways a bigger character. The original is much more brittle and just scary.

Lilah Raptopoulos |
Yes, yes. It’s a more insidious evil.

Lulu Smyth
I mean, to your Donald Trump point, I do think I can imagine him singing, my name is Donald Trump and I am a massive deal. So yeah. Yeah, I think that tracks.

Brooke Masters
My name is Regina George. And I am a massive deal.

Lilah Raptopoulos
My last question about this before we move into the final section. Is just this film is very clearly targeted at Gen Z. It’s full of stars that young people know that I didn’t necessarily, although Renee Rapp, I knew she’s in Sex Lives of College Girls. She was great in that. The actress who plays Janis Ian was the voice of Moana. Did you both feel like I did that this movie was not made for me?

Brooke Masters
Well, I think partly because I was already old for the first version. It wasn’t about me. It was about, that I was less bothered by that because I enjoyed Mean Girls, not because I thought it was made for me, but because, it’s just a great movie. Yeah, that bothered me less.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. What about you?

Lulu Smyth
I, yeah, I think I definitely felt that it wasn’t made for me, but I’m deep into it enough to be sort of adjacent and I understand some of the jokes. So I had the kind of like, cool-mom perspective on it. What did you think, Lilah?

Lilah Raptopoulos
It felt a little to me like watching Riverdale. Like, I watched the then-new Riverdale remake, and I thought it was actually going to be like the Archie comic, which I was really, I really loved growing up. And, instead it was this sort of psychotic, hot teen, Gen Z soap opera. And I felt disappointed in that way again. Like, there were some, I mean, I got to say, like Busy Philipps, who played Regina George’s mom, was just perfect. Like, I actually, I thought she was amazing. And there were some, like, updates to now that really hit and made me laugh out loud quite hard. But I just, I was sort of, I left feeling like, oh, wow, you know, that wasn’t. That was made for that was made for a generation that isn’t in that generation. And something about that felt sort of confused and to be completely selfish, I felt left out. So my last question in that case is, I wonder if this film should have existed at all. It feels like the remake’s trying to create some sort of cultural bridge. And I don’t know, maybe we don’t need one. Mean Girls was an iconic teen movie, like a Heathers or a Breakfast Club, or a Clueless, or maybe like a Ferris Bueller. So maybe it should have just stayed in 2004.

Brooke Masters
I hate to like, stomp on people’s parades, but I kind of do think this didn’t do enough. It even needed to be more different. Or they should’ve just left it alone. I think maybe it’s because it was too close. I think maybe they needed a different plot or a different something, but I don’t think it took it on.

Lulu Smyth
Yeah. I mean, I think it doesn’t, like, it’s not going to detract from the Mean Girls’ legacy. And I definitely enjoyed it. So on that ground, I’m not, like, sad about its existence, but it doesn’t really add anything either.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. It’s interesting. I felt like it was it’s a remake of a musical that’s a remake of a movie, but it’s the same kind of the same movie done 20 years later. And I did feel sort of like, what is this doing for me other than reminding me how much I loved the original? But I also know that that’s a hard thing. Like, I don’t have a solution to that problem, which is like, how do you, invoke the spirit of the original but also do some clever thing to make it new and exciting? So maybe it’s just maybe it’s fine that it is what it is. And yet somehow, something about it still made me mad.

Lulu Smyth
I think, you know, if you go in with low expectations, then you’ll have a great time.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Fun is OK. Lulu, Brooke, thank you so much. That was amazing. We will be back in just a second for More or Less.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each of us talks about one thing that we want to see more of or less of culturally. Lulu, what do you got?

Lulu Smyth
So, this is kind of on theme. I would like to see more serious man actors in frivolous, quote unquote, girly films. There’s a pattern for successful male actors who like Leonardo DiCaprio or Matthew McConaughey or Bradley Cooper, if that’s your thing or even Zac Efron now, where early in their careers, they do romcoms, and then as soon as they get, like really successful, they’ll go off and do an indie film, or like a Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and never be seen again. But Ryan Gosling has returned to the Barbie sphere, so I would like to see more serious male actors follow his lead. I think Troy Bolton is in Iron Claw, then we get Joaquin Phoenix and High School Musical 4.

Brooke Masters
Yeah, I like that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Brooke, what about you?

Brooke Masters
I want fewer universe expansions. I don’t want the 75th Star Wars or the 37th Marvel. I would like a new world. Give me a new world. Mean Girls was great because it created a new high school. I really, I just want some new ideas. Give me something else.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I like that, that’s really great. I agree. I think that we should be reading more plays. I saw a play on Broadway last week called Appropriate, starring Sarah Paulson, and it was amazing. And afterwards, I wanted to revisit it. I felt like, what’s going on here? So I looked it up and I read the play. It’s by Brandon Jacobs Jenkins. It was free online. And I realised that, we stopped reading plays at some point. Like, we all read Shakespeare when we were kids. And then unless you study theatre, that just stops. But reading it was great. I thought I had a great time. I thought it was like a thing that we should be talking about more. They’re short, they take a few hours to read. It’s like all dialogue, which is the best part.

Lulu Smyth
That’s such a good idea. I love that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So that’s it. Read more plays.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you both. This was so fetch. Brooke. Lulu, this is a real delight. Thank you.

Lulu Smyth
Thank you.

Brooke Masters
Thanks for having us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a read through the show notes. We have relevant links and discounts for a subscription to the Financial Times. We also have ways to stay in touch with me and with the show, whether that’s by email, on X or on Instagram. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. But before you go, we have a special extra treat for you. Our senior sound engineer Breen Turner is here, and he’s brought in his Halloween costume from last year to show us. Hi Breen. How are you?

Breen Turner
Hi Lilah. I’m good. Thanks.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Good. So I’m looking at a photo of this right now because we’re not in the same room. But I know you have it with you in studio. It is a pink cardboard box that covers your body. It’s got, lipstick kiss in the middle of it. What am I looking at? Yeah. What am I looking at?

Breen Turner
What are you looking at? So this is . . . 

Lulu Smyth
Oh my God.

Breen Turner
. . . transforms an ordinary man into an anthropomorphic, walking burn book.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And, you bring an esteemed member of our audio team, those journalists. What? Why? What made you want to dress up? I’m not, I think this is a brilliant costume and maybe the best I’ve ever seen. But what inspired you?

Breen Turner
I’m a big fan of arts and crafts, and I’m just a big, big fan of Mean Girls. It’s something me and my girlfriend both really like. It’s very nostalgic for us, and it’s very quotable, and I know that it’s something that a lot of our friendship group would recognise and appreciate as well.

Lulu Smyth
As an aside, Breen is currently holding this up and it is not just a cardboard outline of a book, it’s actually got physical pages with personalised insults.

Brooke Masters
Oh man.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Amazing. Was it a hit, Breen? How did it come off?

Breen Turner
Yes, I think it went down well. I think . . . Was it worth the effort? It did take a while. There was a lot of hot glue involved. But I think it was.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Breen, thank you so much for coming in. For just this moment. Thank you. What a delight. And, I’ll put the picture on Instagram for our listeners.

Breen Turner
Thanks.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Have a lovely weekend, and we’ll find each other again on Monday.