Celebrity
Mean Girls Removed This Lindsay Lohan Joke From The Digital Release
The star was reportedly “hurt” by a line in the new musical film.
Even in the Mean Girls canon, some jokes are just not “fetch.” On Feb. 23, the Mean Girls musical film became available to buy or rent at home, and as pointed out by journalist Kristen Maldonado, the digital release removes a joke that the original movie’s star Lindsay Lohan found upsetting.
In the new film, Megan Thee Stallion declares, “Y2K fire crotch is back,” during a montage of North Shore High students and TikTokers who are talking about Cady Heron’s (Angourie Rice) performance at the Christmas talent show. The line apparently nodded to a 2006 paparazzi video in which Brandon Davis called Lohan a “fire crotch.”
After the musical premiered in theaters, Lohan’s representative said the actor “was very hurt and disappointed by the reference in the film.” Lohan’s opinion was even more significant because she makes a surprise cameo in the new movie, and attended the premiere to support the cast and writer Tina Fey.
Fey seems to have taken her feelings to heart because Megan now says, “Hot girls, we are going back red,” and laughs in the new cut.
Fey is no stranger to amending quotes that haven’t aged well, especially when adapting Mean Girls into a Broadway musical in 2018 and then a movie again in 2024. In January, she talked to the New York Times about removing jokes and storylines that involved race and sexuality.
“I was writing in the early 2000s very much based on my experience as a teen in the late ’80s. It’s come to no one’s surprise that jokes have changed,” she said. “You don’t poke in the way that you used to poke. I very much believe that you can find new ways to do jokes with less accidental shrapnel sideways.”
The comedian even made villain Regina George (Reneé Rapp) somewhat conscious of today’s cultural landscape, removing the moment in the original movie when Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) gets on a table at the girls’ assembly and the OG Regina (Rachel McAdams) says, “Oh my God, it’s her dream come true: diving into a huge pile of girls.”
“I know that even Regina would know what wouldn’t fly,” Fey said. “She’s going to find a way to inflict pain on people, but she’s not going to get herself in trouble. It was mine and Sam Jayne’s feeling that Regina wouldn’t try that now because she knows the kids around her would be like, ‘That’s homophobic.’”
