Making ‘Mean Girls’ (2024) Fetch with Jaquel Spivey, Samantha Jayne, & Arturo Perez Jr.
This piece was originally published on FilmSpeak.
Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. had some pretty big shoes to fill when they signed onto Mean Girls (2024). The beloved 2004 original, written by Tina Fey and directed by Mark Waters, became the quintessential cultural touchstone for the early aughts. Quotes from that film are still widely used in our vernacular, and the film is probably playing on some cable channel at this very moment. The 2004 flick’s prominence led to a 2018 Broadway musical, and now, under the direction of Jayne and Perez Jr., Mean Girls is back on the silver screen. This version isn’t a direct remake of the original film. It’s a singing, dancing remimaging for the TikTok generation.
In preparation for Mean Girls’ (2024) upcoming digital release on Paramount Home Entertainment, FilmSpeak sits down with some of the people who had a hand in bringing the musical to life for the filmgoing audience. Directors Jayne and Perez Jr. and star Jaquel Spivey are no strangers to the world of musicals. In his Broadway debut, Spivey was nominated for a Tony for his performance in A Strange Loop. Jayne and Perez Jr.’s breakout production as co-directors was their short film series, Quarter Life Crisis, that took the anxieties of a twenty-something woman and turned them into catchy music-video-esque shorts.
While working on Mean Girls (2024), Spivey, who plays Damian, tried to forget everything he knew about the original movie and the Broadway show. At the encouragement of Perez Jr., Jayne, and Fey (who updated the script for the new film and reprises her role), Spivey was able to explore who the character of Damian was to him, and he gives much credit to the creative team allowing him freedom to create his version of Damian, including iconic comedienne Tina Fey.
“To have Tina, someone who's been there since the beginning, give us permission to explore and to have fun and to improv,” Spivey explains when discussing his delivery of the iconic “she doesn’t even go here” line. “I was like, what if I just dropped to my knees, like, what if I just dropped to the floor? Like, just disappeared? And they kept it. I didn't expect them to, but it was nice to have such a supportive team to let us just fly with these characters.”
In Perez Jr.’s and Jayne’s eyes, Damian is one of the all-seeing narrators of the film. Damian, along with best friend Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho), is the Greek chorus for the audience. This is one of the ways that the directors captured the essence of a live Broadway production, despite the fact that this is a filmed work. What makes this iteration of Mean Girls (2024) stand on its own are its theatrical energy and the liveliness of the musical numbers. Many recent musicals haven’t understood how to properly capture the enthusiasm and organized chaos of a dance number. Jayne and Perez Jr. saw this as an exciting challenge. How does someone use the camera to capture the chaotic emotions of teenagers?
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“Whether it's a close-up or whether it's a lens choice or whether it's how the camera moves or whether it's the colors in the scene; if everything is going toward one emotion and it's hitting you as hard as possible, hopefully it'll shake you in your seats a little bit and make you feel like you're watching a theatrical experience because your heart's beating a little faster,” Perez Jr. explains. “Incorporating little touches here and there that made it feel live and raw, which is also how teenagers feel all the time,” adds Jayne.
Aside from the musical numbers, one of the largest departures from the original film is Mean Girls’ (2024) overtly queer characters. In the original, only Damian was gay, and was described as “almost too gay to function.” Fey’s updated script gives Damian more depth and a small love story that’s woven throughout the film. Fans have long believed that Janis is gay in the original film, but she ends up with a male mathlete. People have even speculated that Regina George (originally played by Rachel McAdams, now played by Reneé Rapp) might not have been entirely straight. Mean Girls (2024) leaves less to speculate about, and Spivey hopes this is a turning point of sorts.
“There was such pride in being a black man who is six-foot-one, 200 pounds, playing a queer, flamboyant character,” Spivey says. “Someone who is built like he should be playing Michael Oher in The Blind Side, but he's flipping his hair. I feel like when you see queerness, especially from my community, it always looks one way, and it's nice to show you can be whatever the hell you want to be if it feels right and it's comfortable to you…I hope we get more of this. I hope to be a part of more of this, you know?”
At its core, Mean Girls has always been about what it’s like to be a teenage girl in high school and its ability to look at those terrible years with a sense of humor, which is why it has endured all these years.
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“[What] I've always appreciated about Mean Girls,” says Jayne, “is that Tina [Fey] really spoke to us at our level. That's how I felt in high school, and I have always wanted to create things when it's about young women that just show the humanity and layer beneath us.”
One of the first projects that Jayne and Perez Jr. made together was a short film called Vanity, a darkly comedic look at the insecurities of a young woman. In many ways, Mean Girls (2024) is a spiritual sister to their short film from nine years ago. Not only are some of their camera directions similar, but the thematic tones of insecurity, worry, and fear are baked into the DNA of both films.
“Because you know what we put out there and the filter and the polish in addition to that, I mean, there's so much like beneath that, you know,” Jayne explains. “So I think it's really important to connect to other young women and make them feel like they're not alone. I think that's been my goal.”
One thing’s for certain, Mean Girls (2024) is so totally fetch.
Be sure to Check out the full interview with star Jaquel Spivey below:
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