Lindsay Lohan Explained That Mean Girls Homage In Falling For Christmas

As Damian so astutely put it in 2004’s Mean Girls, “everybody in the English-speaking world” knows the song “Jingle Bell Rock.” You know, because the Plastics perform a more-naughty-than-nice rendition of the Bobby Helms classic in their high school’s holiday talent show “every year.” In the film’s iconic scene, Lindsay Lohan’s Cady Heron saves the day by starting an a capella singalong following an onstage mishap. For the first time since then, fans can hear those very vocals once again: Lohan sings an updated version of “Jingle Bell Rock” in the end credits of her new Netflix movie, Falling for Christmas.

What’s even more fetch is the story of how the track made it into the film. Stopping by NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, Nov. 10, Lohan explained that the whole thing actually started as a joke. “I was kidding around with the producers and the director, and I was like, ‘Oh, it would be great to do, you know, like a “Jingle Bell Rock” skit.’ And I shouldn’t have said it because they went straight to, ‘Oh, let’s recreate the Mean Girls talent show scene,’” she recounted to the late-night host. “I was like, ‘Oh no, no. You can’t touch Mean Girls. Sorry... You can’t do that. So then they were like, ‘Oh, can you do the song?’ And so I was like, got to do the song.”

During an interview on Live with Kelly and Ryan the next morning, she also shared more details of how the inclusion of “Jingle Bell Rock” on the soundtrack was the result of a “mistake” on her part. Again describing her “brilliant idea” to jokingly float the idea by directors and producers, she added that her initial idea was to recreate the scene — provocative dance and all — for a “blooper reel” to close out the holiday movie.

She was ultimately the one who nixed the idea, before agreeing to the creative team’s request that she at least record a new “Jingle Bell Rock” rendition for the movie. “And then they forget about it,” she told co-hosts Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest. “The movie had been finally edited, and they were like, ‘Can you do that song, please?’ And I was like, ‘OK.’”

Fans first got a sneak peek at Lohan’s “Jingle Bell Rock” in the Falling for Christmas trailer, which dropped in early October. In the movie, she plays a “newly engaged, spoiled hotel heiress” who suffers total amnesia following a skiing accident. Without any memory of who she really is, she finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner (Chord Overstreet) and his daughter in the days leading up to Christmas. A week before the Falling for Christmas premiered, the actor also released the track as a single on Nov. 4.

In an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lohan said that her return to acting felt “like riding a bicycle. “It’s just in me. It’s a part of me,” she said. “Doing films, playing a character, it brings me so much joy to be able to share a story with people. To take people on that journey with me is such a blessing.”

Maybe that’s why Netflix is predicting that “the Lohanaissance is upon us.”

Falling for Christmas is streaming now.