Mean Girls is a 2004 American teen comedy film directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey. It stars Lindsay Lohan as the main character Cady Heron, alongside Rachel McAdams as Regina George. The cast also features Fey, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Franzese, Neil Flynn, Jonathan Bennett, and Amanda Seyfried in her feature film debut. Its plot centers on a naïve teenage girl who transfers to a public high school in the United States after years of homeschooling in Africa. She quickly befriends two outcasts and the trio form a plan to exact revenge on the queen bee of an envied clique, known as the "Plastics".
Mean Girls was produced by Lorne Michaels' multimedia entertainment studio, Broadway Video. Fey conceived the idea for the film after reading the 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. The book describes female high school social cliques, school bullying and the resulting damaging effect on teenagers. Fey also drew from her own experience at Upper Darby High School in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, as an inspiration for some of the film's concepts. Principal photography began in September 2003 and ended in November. Although the film is set in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, shooting took place primarily in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mean Girls premiered at Pacific's Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles on April 19, 2004, and was theatrically released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on April 30. It received positive reviews, with critics praising Waters' direction, Fey's script and its humor, and the performances of the cast, with Lohan's acting in particular earning high praise. The film also proved financially successful, grossing $130.1 million on a $17–18 million budget. Lohan won two MTV Movie Awards and three Teen Choice Awards, among other accolades. In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker ranked Lohan's performance as the eleventh-best film performance of the 21st century.
A sequel, Mean Girls 2, premiered on ABC Family in 2011. The film also spawned various adaptations, including a stage musical, which premiered on Broadway in 2018, with a film adaptation of the musical released in 2024.
Plot
After being homeschooled her entire life and having spent the last twelve years in Africa, 16-year-old Cady Heron begins her first day at North Shore High School. She struggles to make friends and is patronized by the teachers, but befriends outcasts Janis Ian and Damian Leigh, who explain the school's various cliques to her and warn her about the "Plastics", a trio of wealthy mean girls consisting of ruthless queen bee Regina George, insecure gossiper Gretchen Wieners, and bubbly airhead Karen Smith. Regina, Gretchen, and Karen take a shine to Cady and unexpectedly invite her to join the Plastics. Upon realizing this, Janis hatches a plan to infiltrate the group and destroy Regina's reputation.
Cady becomes infatuated with her classmate Aaron Samuels. Karen and Gretchen reveal that Aaron is Regina's ex-boyfriend and thus is off-limits, though Regina claims not to care if Cady and Aaron date. Despite Janis's warnings, Cady comes to enjoy hanging out with the group, including writing insulting remarks about their classmates and teachers in a scrapbook called the "Burn Book." At a Halloween house party, Regina promises to talk to Aaron on Cady's behalf, but instead kisses him in front of her and resumes their relationship. Enraged, Cady fully commits to Janis's plan.
Over the following months, Cady, with Janis and Damian's help, manages to trick Gretchen into divulging secrets, sabotage Regina's relationship with Aaron (and spend time with him by pretending to need math tutoring, despite being mathematically gifted), and cause Regina to gain weight by giving her high-calorie snack bars under the pretense that they are diet food. After violating the Plastics' dress code rules by wearing sweatpants on Monday due to her weight gain, Regina is ousted from the group, as Cady replaces her as "queen bee".
While Cady's parents are out of town, she throws a house party, during which she drunkenly admits to Aaron that she does not actually need math tutoring. He derides her for being as manipulative as Regina. Janis and Damian angrily confront Cady for throwing a party instead of attending the former's art show and declare that she has become as fake as she pretended to be. Meanwhile, Regina discovers the truth about the snack bars and inserts slander of herself into the Burn Book, hoping to frame Cady and the other Plastics.
Regina spreads the book's pages throughout the hallways, inciting chaos. Principal Duvall and math teacher Ms. Norbury gather the female junior students in the gym to talk through their social issues. During this, Janis publicly admits her plan to destroy Regina and openly mocks her, much to the other students' excitement. Regina furiously storms out, pursued by an apologetic Cady. While ranting at Cady, Regina is hit by a school bus, fracturing her spine. Rumors circulate that Cady intentionally pushed Regina in front of the bus, resulting her in becoming a social pariah and grounded by her parents.
After realizing a comment she wrote in the Burn Book has framed Ms. Norbury as a drug dealer, causing police to visit the school and interrogate her math class, Cady decides to take full responsibility for the book. Regina, Gretchen, and Karen are spared punishment. To earn extra credit, Cady joins the Mathletes, moderated by Ms. Norbury and led by fellow student Kevin Gnapoor. At the state finals, she correctly answers the tiebreaker question, winning the championship. The team arrives at the Spring Fling dance, where Cady is elected queen, to her surprise. She breaks her tiara and distributes the pieces to others in the crowd, making peace with Janis, Damian, and the Plastics. She later shares a slow dance and kiss with Aaron.
The Plastics disband by the time senior year begins. A fully recovered Regina joins the school's lacrosse team to channel her anger positively, Gretchen joins the "Cool Asians" clique, and Karen becomes the school's weather girl. Cady begins dating Aaron and continues to hang out with Janis and Damian, the former of whom starts dating Kevin. While reflecting on the relative social peace that has taken over the school, Cady notices a new popular clique in the freshman class and wonders how long the "Junior Plastics" will last, imagining them being hit by a school bus.
Cast
The film's cast also includes Molly Shanahan and Jonathan Malen as Kristen Hadley and her boyfriend, and Daniel DeSanto and Diego Klattenhoff as jocks Jason and Shane Oman, Gretchen and Regina's respective boyfriends. Dwayne Hill plays the school's predatory gym teacher Coach Carr. Alisha Morrison plays "unfriendly" student Lea Edwards and Julia Chantrey plays Amber D'Alessio. Sharron Matthews portrays Mr. Duvall's secretary Joan.
Production Development
Tina Fey read Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes and called Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to suggest it could be turned into a film. Michaels contacted Paramount Pictures, who purchased the rights to the book. As the book is nonfiction, Fey wrote the plot from scratch, borrowing elements from her own experience at Upper Darby High School and her impressions of Evanston Township High School and New Trier Township High School from her time living in the Chicago area, upon which the film's fictional "North Shore High School" is based.
Fey named many characters after real-life friends. In a 2014 interview about the movie, she told Entertainment Weekly, "I tried to use real names in writing because it's just easier." Main character Cady Heron was named after Fey's college roommate Cady Garey. Damian was named after Fey's high school friend Damian Holbrook, who went on to become a writer for TV Guide. Minor character Glen Coco is named after the real Glenn Cocco, a film editor in Los Angeles and friend of Tina Fey's older brother. Janis Ian was named after singer Janis Ian, who was one of the two musical guests on the first Saturday Night Live episode, in which she sang her hit song "At Seventeen", which can be heard playing in the background when the girls are fighting at Regina's house. The film was originally going to be called Homeschooled.
Casting Fey, Michaels, and Paramount Pictures chairman Sherry Lansing wanted to cast Lindsay Lohan in the film after seeing her performance in Freaky Friday (2003). Lohan was originally set to play Regina George, but the casting team ended up feeling she was their strongest choice for the role of Cady Heron, and since executives feared the "mean girl" role would alienate her audience, she eventually agreed to play the lead. Rachel McAdams was cast as Regina because Fey felt McAdams being "kind and polite" made her perfect for such an evil-spirited character, and director Mark Waters, who previously directed Lohan in Freaky Friday, felt Lohan was "a little intimidated" by her which made him like their dynamic. McAdams had originally auditioned for the role of Cady but was deemed "a bit too old" for the character. Kristen Stewart, Michelle Trachtenberg and Mae Whitman were considered for the role of Cady opposite Lohan's Regina George early on. According to casting director Marci Liroff, Blake Lively was the top choice to play the role of Karen Smith, but was told by the producers to keep looking. Amanda Seyfried originally auditioned for Regina, and although Waters thought she was "fantastic", the producers instead suggested her for Karen due to her "spacey and daffy sense of humor". Leighton Meester, Haylie Duff, Kate Mara, Megan Fox and Ashley Tisdale were also up for the role of Karen. America Ferrera and Kat Dennings were both heavily favored for the role of Janis Ian. Lizzy Caplan was at first considered too beautiful for that role, for which Waters felt a "Kelly Osbourne-type" was necessary, but Caplan was chosen for being able to portray raw emotion. Evan Rachel Wood was offered a role in the film, but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts, a decision she later regretted. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was asked to audition for the role of Gretchen Wieners, but her mother declined as she disliked the script. Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens also auditioned for Gretchen. Jonathan Bennett was a last-minute replacement after the actor originally slated to play the role of Aaron Samuels was fired. James Franco had previously been considered for Aaron, and Penn Badgley, Jared Padalecki and Max Minghella all auditioned as well. Fey's decision to hire Bennett was due to his resemblance to her longtime SNL co-star Jimmy Fallon. Fey envisioned Ross Mathews for the role of Damian Leigh; Mathews auditioned, but claimed that his audition was "terrible". Daniel Franzese was ultimately cast as Damien. Lacey Chabert and Daniel Franzese were the last actors tested for their roles. Fey wrote two roles based on fellow SNL alumni Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler, the latter of whom Fey thought the producers would perceive as too young to portray a teenager's mother. The cast additionally ended up with a fourth veteran of the show, Ana Gasteyer.
Filming Although set in Evanston, Illinois, the film was mostly shot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; at the Etobicoke Collegiate Institute and Malvern Collegiate Institute. Additional filming took place at Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey, US. Landmarks include the University of Toronto's Convocation Hall and Sherway Gardens, Toronto. Principal photography commenced on September 27, and concluded on November 25, 2003.
Soundtrack
Mean Girls: Music from the Motion Picture was released by Rykodisc and Bulletproof Records on September 21, 2004, the same day as the DVD release. The album featured songs performed by the Donnas, Pink, Kelis, Samantha Ronson, Boomkat, Blondie, Katy Rose and Peaches amongst several others.