TV & Movies
20 Years Ago, Blake Lively Was Almost A Mean Girl
Serena van der Woodsen very nearly infiltrated The Plastics.
Amanda Seyfried’s Mean Girls character was almost played by a Gossip Girl star. Seyfried revealed to Vanity Fair in 2023 that Blake Lively auditioned for the part of Karen Smith, while she tried out for Regina George — which ultimately went to Rachel McAdams.
“I’d flown out to LA for the first time with my mother. It was very exciting,” Seyfried recalled. “I met Lacey Chabert for the first time and Lindsay Lohan was in the room. Blake Lively was playing Karen, and then I was Regina.”
After returning home from her Mean Girls audition, Seyfried was informed that the casting team felt she was better suited for the role of Karen.
“They were like ‘We think you’re more correct for Karen.’ So I was like, ‘Oh god, OK, sure,’” she added. And the rest was history.
The film’s casting director, Marci Liroff, had a similar recollection of the audition. “Amanda Seyfried had read for Regina and we really liked her,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2021, revealing that Mean Girls producer Lorne Michaels had suggested making her Karen instead.
Lively Was The Top Pick
Casting director Liroff also disclosed that Lively was initially their first choice to play Karen.
“We wanted Blake Lively, who hadn’t done The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants yet, for Karen,” she told Cosmopolitan. While Lively made it to the final screen tests, filmmakers “said to keep looking.”
Liroff also said that Ashley Tisdale was in the running to play Gretchen Wieners, but Lacey Chabert “came in and just got it on the very first take.”
Lindsay Lohan Wanted To Play Regina
Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan had her heart set on portraying The Plastics queen bee, before being cast as Cady Heron.
“I wanted to play Regina. I had just played—in Confessions and Freaky—not the cool girl in school,” Lohan told Entertainment Weekly in 2014. “I was still 17 years old and I wanted to be the cool girl on set.”
However, according to Lohan’s Freaky Friday director, Mark Waters, the powers that be felt Mean Girls wouldn’t work with Lohan as the villain. “She now has an audience that won’t accept that,” Waters told Vulture in 2014.
