Mean Girls Day: 30 Things You Didn’t Know About The Hit Teen Comedy

It’s now been 20 years since Mean Girls was first released, yet we still find ourselves turning to it whenever we need a laugh.

By now, die-hard Mean Girls have will have memorised all the film’s key scenes and likely know its iconic quotes backwards, but there are probably still things about the film you’ve never heard before.

Like, which A-listers were originally considered to be part of the Plastics? And where exactly did Tina Fey get “fetch” and “Glenn Coco” from?

Here are 30 things you probably never knew about Mean Girls…

Obviously it’s nothing new that a hit film should be based on a book, but because Mean Girls was inspired by what was basically a self-help book for parents, Tina Fey had to really think outside the box when it came to putting a narrative together.

There are some major nods to the book within Mean Girls, though, most notably Gretchen’s speech about the Plastics’ rules, which are lifted verbatim from Queen Bees And Wannabes.

Everyone had originally intended for the film to be called Homeschooled, and be about Cady’s character joining a local high school after a lifetime of being taught from home.

However, this was before the idea for Cady to have grown up in Africa came along, after which there were some rewrites and a change of title.

Certain scenes had to be edited or axed completely, in order for the film to get a more teen-friendly rating.

Among these was a scene where Cady walks in on Gretchen and Jason kissing was supposed to have involved the two engaging in some more “adult” behaviour, while the line “made out with a hot dog” was originally “masturbated with a hot dog”.

Frankly, we think what they went with was a lot funnier.

Censors told the Mean Girls team that the iconic line “I can’t help it if I have a wide-set vagina and a heavy flow” was also going to have to be cut, but they fought back, pointing to more explicit moments that had been featured in Anchorman.

“We told them, ‘You’re only saying this because it’s a girl, and she’s talking about a part of her anatomy’,” director Mark Waters revealed to Vulture years later.

“There’s no sexual context whatsoever, and to say this is restrictive to an audience of girls is demeaning to all women…. And they eventually had to back down.”

Tina Fey – who wrote the film, and also stars as Miss Norbury – told Entertainment Weekly: “I tried to use real names in writing because it’s just easier.”

Main character Cady Heron was named after her college roommate, while Damian got his name from her high school friend, Damian Holbrook, who later became a writer for TV Guide.

“You go Glenn Coco” is one of the film’s most-quoted lines, and there is, in fact, a real Glenn Coco. He’s a film editor in Los Angeles, who knew Tina Fey’s brother.

Regina, fittingly, is the Latin word for “queen”, while Janis Ian got her name from the US singer-songwriter of the same name.

One of Janis’ signature songs, At Seventeen, can be heard in one of the key scenes in Mean Girls, when the Plastics are arguing over the phone.

The key example of this is, obviously, Gretchen’s attempts at “making ‘fetch’ happen”.

“It was an attempt on my part to counteract the stereotype that girls can’t do math,” she told the New York Times shortly after the film’s release, quickly adding: “Even though I didn’t understand a word [my character] was saying.”

In fact, it sounds like she had her heart set on the role… until Freaky Friday came out, that is, and the production company seemed less convinced that people would believe Lindsay Lohan as a villain.

“Sherry Lansing, who was heading Paramount at the time, told us, ’We have to have Lindsay play the lead in Mean Girls,” Mark Waters told Vulture in 2014.

“It’s just not going to work having her play the villain, because she now has an audience that won’t accept that’.”

Ultimately, Lindsay was happy with the decision, though, as it meant she had “more lines”. A fair point.

Mean Girls was actually Amanda Seyfried’s first film role, and she had her eye on playing the Queen Bee, Regina George.

″[Amanda] tested for Regina and was kind of brilliant, and very different than Rachel’s approach,” Mark told Vulture. “She played it in a much more ethereal but still kind of scary way. She was more frightening, but oddly, less intimidating.”

Once Lindsay was cast as Cady Heron, though, suddenly Rachel started to make sense as Regina George. And the rest is history.

Evan Rachel Wood turned down a part in Mean Girls, while Blake Lively and High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale both tried out for the role of Karen.

James Franco was also in the running to play Cady’s love interest Aaron Samuels.

Daniel Franzese – who played Damian – told Attitude magazine in 2014 that someone else had been cast as Aaron Samuels, but he was dropped on the first day of production.

Recalling a cast dinner before filming began, Daniel said: “There was another actor who was playing Aaron Samuels at the dinner.

“Now, the next day at the table read, this other actor hadn’t shaved and he didn’t take his hat off; he was playing it really cool.

“People kept coming over to him like, ‘You know, you should really take your hat off.’ And then, right after the table read, he got fired and they called Jonathan Bennett, who I guess was their second choice.”

You know him best as “math enthusiast/badass MC” Kevin G, but Rajiv told Cosmopolitan: “I auditioned for Damian but got called back for Kevin G.”

After a shaky first audition – including flubbing his character’s infamous rap – he ended up bagging the role after impressing the director second time around.

Director Mark Waters told Cosmo: “Tina and I met Daniel Franzese in New York City and really liked him, he was so funny and had such a great personality but he came in the room, auditioned and was terrible.

“We were going to LA to do the readthrough and still hadn’t cast Damian, we were getting very frustrated. Then Tina and I remembered how funny Daniel was and thought he would be great just to have in the room, even if we don’t give him the part.

“He came and he brought it. He’d clearly done his homework and was getting huge laughs. By the time it was over, we knew he was our Damian.”

In fact, there was only an age gap of seven years between Rachel McAdams and Amy Poehler when they played mother and daughter, which really says something about both of their acting ability.

Apparently Amy Poehler put a cocktail sausage in her character’s bra, which the pooch went for immediately.

He broke his hand right before filming started, so Tina Fey thought on her feet and decided to give Principal Duvall carpal tunnel syndrome.

That did lead to one of the most underrated exchanges in the whole film, though.

Bringing new meaning to “on Wednesdays, we wear pink”, right?

For those wondering, the first scene of the film to be shot was the one where Kevin G introduces himself, and reveals his outstanding business card.

In fact, while he filmed the first part of his Christmas pageant, there was only one person in the auditorium audience… his mum. N’awww.

Daniel even got to meet Christina Aguilera years after Mean Girls came out, but it didn’t go as he envisaged.

“I thought for sure that would be an exciting moment in my life,” he told Yahoo!. “And I was like, ‘Christina, my name’s Daniel. I sing Beautiful in Mean Girls’. And she was like, ‘Never saw it’. And then turned her back and walked away. She was so rude.”

Interestingly, you never actually hear Regina, Gretchen or Karen refer to themselves as the Plastics for the entire film.

And it turns out that infamous “pink shirt” worn by Lindsay Lohan in the film really was his.

Jonathan Bennett recalled to Cosmo: “They spent more time on my hair than they did with some of the girls. The first shot of me in the movie, when you see my character for first time in that turn around close up, I was sent back to hair and make up for them to do my hair more.

“The director would say: ‘It’s got to be smoother and more buttery’.”

He added: “Normally in such movies, the girl is the object of affection but in Mean Girls everything is reversed and it was me so every shot of my hair, make up and clothes had to be perfect at all times.”

The track in question – repeated various times throughout Mean Girls – is Built This Way, performed by Samantha Ronson. Yes, the same Samantha Ronson that Lindsay was romantically linked to for several years later in her career.

Daniel Franzese told Yahoo!: “The first take that we did of that, we really went for it and like made out. And Mark was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s not it, it’s too much!’.

“And everybody was lapping it up. We like really went for like a real kiss. It was really funny… It was actually my first on-screen kiss.”

“Jonathan and I had confided in each other we were gay so we were able to be comfortable,” Daniel told Cosmo, with the Aaron Samuels star agreeing: “We both knew like, ‘Oh, you’re in the club’.

“It was a different time back then so we confided in each other and shared our own worries, fears, hopes and dreams. Having Daniel and us being able to talk to each other really helped.”

Apparently, Tina Fey’s character was supposed to find out Kevin G was selling ecstasy to his fellow students, confiscating his pills and putting them in her desk drawer.

Unfortunately, when she was accused of being a “pusher” in the Burn Book, this would lead the police to actually find drugs in her desk, with Damian somehow eventually taking the heat.

Listen, we’re going to be honest. That’s something we’re pretty relieved ended up being cut completely.

In recent years, the cast have used the day to raise awareness of important causes. In 2017, they shared a fundraiser for those affected by a shooting in Las Vegas, while two years later, they shone a light on The Thirst Project, which aimed to raise money to build a freshwater well in Uganda.

In 2020, the film’s stars took part in a virtual reunion on 3 October, in collaboration with HeadCount, to promote voting in the then-upcoming US election.

Mariah Carey has spoken numerous times about how much she loves Mean Girls, with her 2009 hit Obsessed taking its hook from a Regina George quote.

Meanwhile, Ariana Grande recreated scenes from the film in her 2019 Thank U, Next video, which featured cameos from Jonathan Bennett and Stefanie Drummond.

A sequel of sorts, Mean Girls 2, does exist but… the less said about that the better, to be honest.

Y’know what, maybe the less said about that the better too…

Mean Girls is now available to stream on Paramount+. And what could be more “fetch” than that?