=== Development ===
=== Development ===
Tina Fey decided to read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes after reading Wiseman’s interview with the New York Times Magazine. After reading, Fey called Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to suggest it could be turned into a film. Wiseman received other film offers, but Fey and Michaels led their pitch with the idea that Wiseman would be included in the movie’s production, which ultimately led to Wiseman collaborating with them. Michaels contacted Paramount Pictures, who purchased the rights to the book.
Tina Fey decided to read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes after reading Wiseman’s interview with the New York Times Magazine. After reading, Fey called Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to suggest it could be turned into a film. Wiseman received other film offers, but Fey and Michaels led their pitch with the idea that Wiseman would be included in the movie’s production, which ultimately led to Wiseman collaborating with them. Michaels contacted Paramount Pictures, who purchased the rights to the book.
=== Casting ===
=== Casting ===
=== Scripts ===
=== Scripts ===
In an interview with Variety, writer Tina Fey discussed how the final script came to be, sharing that she had promised Rosalind Wiseman that the movie would convey an overall positive message. She began writing drafts while on a trip to Fire Island, New York, where she would ask teenage girls about their experiences of girlhood. Later, Fey reveals that there were 10 drafts of Mean Girls written in the span of 18 months. Originally, Fey wanted to play a teacher, similar to Wiseman, who reforms her class to better her students. The first draft she wrote would’ve received an R-rating, meaning they had to cut a lot of content to drop the rating to PG-13. At first, the iconic quote was not “Is your muffin buttered?”, but instead a more inappropriate phrase they had to sacrifice to drop the rating. Fey also shared insight about writing the Mean Girls musical. Her ambition got the best of her when she believed that it wouldn’t take five years to write the musical adaptation. Fey truly started from scratch; she had never written a musical before. She even resorted to Wikipedia to help her produce the opening act 2 number. Fey expressed that she wanted to create a sequel to the original movie for quite some time, but nothing ever came of it. She says that it is for the better so they can focus on the musical.
In an interview with Variety, writer Tina Fey discussed how the final script came to be, sharing that she had promised Rosalind Wiseman that the movie would convey an overall positive message. She began writing drafts while on a trip to Fire Island, New York, where she would ask teenage girls about their experiences of girlhood. Later, Fey reveals that there were 10 drafts of Mean Girls written in the span of 18 months. Originally, Fey wanted to play a teacher, similar to Wiseman, who reforms her class to better her students. The first draft she wrote would’ve received an R-rating, meaning they had to cut a lot of content to drop the rating to PG-13. At first, the iconic quote was not “Is your muffin buttered?”, but instead a more inappropriate phrase they had to sacrifice to drop the rating. Fey also shared insight about writing the Mean Girls musical. Her ambition got the best of her when she believed that it wouldn’t take five years to write the musical adaptation. Fey truly started from scratch; she had never written a musical before. She even resorted to Wikipedia to help her produce the opening act 2 number. Fey expressed that she wanted to create a sequel to the original movie for quite some time, but nothing ever came of it. She says that it is for the better so they can focus on the musical.
Mark Waters also shared his experiences directing Mean Girls with Vulture. He said Paramount was concerned about having Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler in the film because of their Saturday Night Live skits that raise controversy. Water also mentioned their ratings controversy, claiming the MPAA was sexist and comparing it to the movie “The Anchorman”, which has a PG-13 rating, and that its content was more inappropriate than what Mean Girls was covering.
Mark Waters also shared his experiences directing Mean Girls with Vulture. He said Paramount was concerned about having Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler in the film because of their Saturday Night Live skits that raise controversy. Water also mentioned their ratings controversy, claiming the MPAA was sexist and comparing it to the movie “The Anchorman”, which has a PG-13 rating, and that its content was more inappropriate than what Mean Girls was covering.
=== Filming ===
=== Filming ===
=== Rosalind Wiseman ===
=== Rosalind Wiseman ===
Roslind Wiseman, writer of the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, was the main inspiration for Mean Girls. Wiseman struggled with legal issues regarding the rights to the book after Paramount Pictures purchased them. When Paramount Pictures initially purchased the rights, Paramount paid Wiseman $400,000 before production began on Mean Girls in 2002. Wiseman signed away the rights to her work, including other projects resulting from the movie, though there was no talk of additional projects at the time. After Mean Girls was released to the public, the movie made $130.5 million worldwide. After the movie’s success, Wiseman argued that she deserved more compensation for being the main inspiration for a film with such a cultural impact. When Wiseman’s lawyers reached out to Paramount Pictures, Paramount had shown no interest in providing Wiseman with additional compensation. A theater company later approached Wiseman to create a rendition of the film, but both Paramount and Fey declined the offer. A few years later, Paramount and Fey released Mean Girls, the musical, without Wiseman. When Mean Girls, the musical, appeared on Broadway and Mean Girls (2024 film) was released, Wiseman did not receive any compensation. When Wiseman questioned Paramount about the pay, they said she no longer owns the rights. Paramount proceeded to tell Wiseman that no money had been made from the hit movie. Fey is open about her inspiration for Mean Girls being from the book, but Fey does not fight for Wiseman to make any more money from the franchise. Wiseman also assisted Fey in creating a musical rendition of the movie to help educate high school students. Wiseman did not receive any payment for her assistance on the project, nor did she receive compensation for her behind-the-scenes work with the actors and actresses on the set of Mean Girls.
Wiseman, writer of the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, was the main inspiration for Mean Girls. Wiseman struggled with legal issues regarding the rights to the book after Paramount Pictures purchased them. When Paramount Pictures initially purchased the rights, Paramount paid Wiseman $400,000 before production began on Mean Girls in 2002. Wiseman signed away the rights to her work, including other projects resulting from the movie, though there was no talk of additional projects at the time. After Mean Girls was released to the public, the movie made $130.5 million worldwide. After the movie’s success, Wiseman argued that she deserved more compensation for being the main inspiration for a film with such a cultural impact. When Wiseman’s lawyers reached out to Paramount Pictures, Paramount had shown no interest in providing Wiseman with additional compensation. A theater company later approached Wiseman to create a rendition of the film, but both Paramount and Fey declined the offer. A few years later, Paramount and Fey released Mean Girls, the musical, without Wiseman. When Mean Girls, the musical, appeared on Broadway and Mean Girls (2024 film) was released, Wiseman did not receive any compensation. When Wiseman questioned Paramount about the pay, they said she no longer owns the rights. Paramount proceeded to tell Wiseman that no money had been made from the hit movie. Fey is open about her inspiration for Mean Girls being from the book, but Fey does not fight for Wiseman to make any more money from the franchise. Wiseman also assisted Fey in creating a musical rendition of the movie to help educate high school students. Wiseman did not receive any payment for her assistance on the project, nor did she receive compensation for her behind-the-scenes work with the actors and actresses on the set of Mean Girls.
== Cultural Impact ==
== Cultural Impact ==
…Organized in collaboration with HeadCount to promote voting in the 2020 United States presidential election, it was the first time the entire cast gathered since the 2004 premiere.
…Organized in collaboration with HeadCount to promote voting in the 2020 United States presidential election, it was the first time the entire cast gathered since the 2004 premiere.
=== Writers Guild of America Strike ===
=== Writers Guild of America Strike ===
On October 3, 2023, the TikTok account “Mean Girls” posted a sequence of twenty-three videos featuring the entirety of the Mean Girls movie to celebrate “Mean Girls Day.” When the account uploaded these videos to TikTok, the 2023 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike had just come to an end. The WGA strike involved screenwriters striking against production companies to update the current system regarding their residuals. Posting the movie on TikTok allows the person running the account, as well as the production company, to make all profits without having to pay the writers or actors their residuals from it. People saw this as a way for Paramount to circumvent the new contract resulting from the WGA strike, as the contract did not include paying screenwriters’ residuals for social media uploads. Re-uploading movies without paying the screenwriters or actors’ residuals is nothing new, though. Before TikTok, it was common to find people re-uploading movies onto other social platforms, such as YouTube, and taking full compensation for it. Now that the re-uploading culture has migrated to TikTok, production studios view this as another means of avoiding payment of residuals.
On October 3, 2023, the TikTok account “Mean Girls” posted a sequence of twenty-three videos featuring the entirety of the Mean Girls movie to celebrate “Mean Girls Day.” When the account uploaded these videos to TikTok, the 2023 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike had just come to an end. The WGA strike involved screenwriters striking against production companies to update the current system regarding their residuals. Posting the movie on TikTok allows the person running the account, as well as the production company, to make all profits without having to pay the writers or actors their residuals from it. People saw this as a way for Paramount to circumvent the new contract resulting from the WGA strike, as the contract did not include paying screenwriters’ residuals for social media uploads. Re-uploading movies without paying the screenwriters or actors’ residuals is nothing new, though. Before TikTok, it was common to find people re-uploading movies onto other social platforms, such as YouTube, and taking full compensation for it. Now that the re-uploading culture has migrated to TikTok, production studios view this as another means of avoiding payment of residuals.
== Critical Response ==
== Critical Response ==
In 2025, Megan Loucks from InSession Film gave the film an “A Grade,” praising its character work and “most quotable and memorable scenes.” She commends its relevance in current culture, even twenty-one years after the film’s release. Loucks recalls watching the movie for the first time as a young teenager, realizing the significance of kindness to one another in a movie that perfectly encapsulates girlhood. “Mean Girls works as well as it does thanks to Tina Fey’s script that is equal parts hilarious comedy and social commentary on how absolutely dreadful high school is.” She continued to applaud Waters and Fey’s way of developing the characters through the film, describing how each of them is different, and summarized what it is like to be in high school again.
In 2025, Megan Loucks from InSession Film gave the film an “A Grade,” praising its character work and “most quotable and memorable scenes.” She commends its relevance in current culture, even twenty-one years after the film’s release. Loucks recalls watching the movie for the first time as a young teenager, realizing the significance of kindness to one another in a movie that perfectly encapsulates girlhood. “Mean Girls works as well as it does thanks to Tina Fey’s script that is equal parts hilarious comedy and social commentary on how absolutely dreadful high school is.” She continued to applaud Waters and Fey’s way of developing the characters through the film, describing how each of them is different, and summarized what it is like to be in high school again.
”’Plot”’
”’Plot”’
 |
This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution.
If you’re starting a new article, you can develop it here until it’s ready to go live. If you’re working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the “Publish page” button. (It just means ‘save’; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content. |
Portrayal of “Girl World” across other films
The concept of “girl world” in cinema refers to the complexities of female relationships, societal expectations, competition, and reputation. Girl world differs between different films with each film showing a different side to this ideal. In her book Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn explores how films such as Clueless, Mean Girls, and The Devil Wears Prada portray girl world to show how women are judged, how cliques function, and the pressure to conform to social power dynamics.
In the film Clueless, released in 1995, the main character Cher is a rich, stylish, and popular girl that spends her time worrying about her looks and “obsessed with the pleasures of fashion, beauty culture, and shopping” (Karlyn 77). Although at the beginning of the movie she might come off as shallow and entitled, she honestly has a kind heart and tries to use her popularity to help others. In this film, she uses her popularity to help make the new girl more popular and give her a makeover as well as setting her teachers up so they can be happier. The story of this film is very lighthearted, and innocent compared to Mean Girls. Cher’s character shows that girls can use their status and popularity to lift people up rather than tear them down. Of course, there is going to be drama just like there is in every teen movie, but the overall vibe is positive and lighthearted. This movie stands out from other girl world movies because it shows that popularity doesn’t have to be toxic.
Karlyn argues that Mean Girls, released about a decade after Clueless, highlights a darker and more serious side of girl world by emphasizing how status, gossip, and competition can ruin friendships as well as create false and nasty narratives about other girls, leading to toxic relationships, showcasing the exact opposite Clueless. Unlike Clueless, where popularity has a positive influence on both the “Queen Bee” and those that look up to her, Mean Girls “acknowledges the intensity of girls’ anger, their attraction to power, and the ways sisterhood—the mantra of the Second Wave—still goes sour in the age of the Third” (Karlyn 88). Although the film is satire, it is also centered around how young women are shaped by systems of power and control. The film exposes the dangers of toxic friendships by focusing on how girls are exploited and degraded for their own benefit. In the film, the Queen Bee, Regina George, uses her status to control others and uses gossip as a weapon. For example, the “Burn Book” symbolizes how her power and influence has become a weapon that she soon formed against the girls apart of The Plastics when she felt like she was a victim.
The Devil Wears Prada, released in 2006, is a much more mature portrayal of girl world as it shifts the focus from high school dynamics to the corporate world, still keeping the central idea of girl world and introducing a more adult perspective. Karlyn argues that “the film takes an even darker look at Girl World than Mean Girls does” (Karlyn 92). Instead of showing teenagers fighting over popularity and boys, this film shows adult women competing for image, power, and success in such a demanding and competitive industry. Girl world isn’t just a concept for teen girls in middle and high school; it can follow women into their careers but in more intense ways compared to minor issues in school. Karlyn explains by describing how Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine, represents the “Queen Bee” in the workplace. Similar to Regina in Mean Girls, Miranda controls everyone around her with fear and everyone works to seek her approval. The major difference between the two is that Miranda’s power isn’t about high school popularity but about status in the fashion industry. Her power has had a significant impact on the protagonist, Andy Sachs, and although she tried to act like Miranda’s harsh opinions on her life and style didn’t bother her, it affected her role in the workplace as well as how she was viewed in Miranda’s eyes later on since she started changing everything about herself to meet her standards. In this film, the competition is about careers, money, and long-term success, making consequences more permanent than how it would be in high school.
Critical Analysis
In Mean Girls, the plot focuses on Cady Heron as a new student in an American high school getting tangled in the world of popularity, cliques, and gossip. At first, the film seems like a comedy about teenage drama and surviving high school, but Emily D. Ryalls argues in her dissertation The Culture of Mean: Gender, Race, and Class in Mediated Images of Girls’ Bullying that the film reflects bigger issues within our society. Ryalls explains that “mean girl” behavior and popularity across films other than Mean Girls such as Odd Girl Out (2005), The Breakfast Club (1985), Heathers (1989), etc. isn’t only about beauty or personality but by larger systems such as race, identity, and class. She argues that “while the Queen Bee is always White, the Mean Girl discourse does not ignore girls of color. Instead, although girls of color are not at the center of the narrative, they are acknowledged as having the potential to be mean, but, more often, girls of color are shown to exemplify the characteristics of normative White femininity (they are nice and prioritize heterosexual relationships) and to escape the lure of popularity” (Ryalls 3). Her point is clear in Mean Girls as Regina George is the “Queen Bee” and is white, attractive, and of a higher class. Girls of color are shown and acknowledged in the film but obviously they don’t have the same power or receive much attention in the plot. For example, the “Unfriendly Black Hotties” and the “Cool Asians” are recognized as cliques and acknowledged at one point in the movie, but they aren’t apart of the plot or barely receive any attention. This supports Ryall’s idea that girls of color or of a lower class are often overlooked in “girl world” films and left outside of the plot.
Tina Fey decided to read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes after reading Wiseman’s interview with the New York Times Magazine.[1] Tina Fey read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes and After reading, Fey called Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to suggest it could be turned into a film. Wiseman received other film offers, but Fey and Michaels led their pitch with the idea that Wiseman would be included in the movie’s production, which ultimately led to Wiseman collaborating with them.[1] Michaels contacted Paramount Pictures, who purchased the rights to the book.
In an interview with Variety, writer Tina Fey discussed how the final script came to be, sharing that she had promised Rosalind Wiseman that the movie would convey an overall positive message. She began writing drafts while on a trip to Fire Island, New York, where she would ask teenage girls about their experiences of girlhood. Later, Fey reveals that there were 10 drafts of Mean Girls written in the span of 18 months. Originally, Fey wanted to play a teacher, similar to Wiseman, who reforms her class to better her students. The first draft she wrote would’ve received an R-rating, meaning they had to cut a lot of content to drop the rating to PG-13. At first, the iconic quote was not “Is your muffin buttered?”, but instead a more inappropriate phrase they had to sacrifice to drop the rating. Fey also shared insight about writing the Mean Girls musical. Her ambition got the best of her when she believed that it wouldn’t take five years to write the musical adaptation. Fey truly started from scratch; she had never written a musical before. She even resorted to Wikipedia to help her produce the opening act 2 number. Fey expressed that she wanted to create a sequel to the original movie for quite some time, but nothing ever came of it. She says that it is for the better so they can focus on the musical.[2]
Mark Waters also shared his experiences directing Mean Girls with Vulture. He said Paramount was concerned about having Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler in the film because of their Saturday Night Live skits that raise controversy. Water also mentioned their ratings controversy, claiming the MPAA was sexist and comparing it to the movie “The Anchorman”, which has a PG-13 rating, and that its content was more inappropriate than what Mean Girls was covering.[3]
Rosalind Wiseman, writer of the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, was the main inspiration for Mean Girls. Wiseman struggled with legal issues regarding the rights to the book after Paramount Pictures purchased them. When Paramount Pictures initially purchased the rights, Paramount paid Wiseman $400,000 before production began on Mean Girls in 2002. Wiseman signed away the rights to her work, including other projects resulting from the movie, though there was no talk of additional projects at the time. After Mean Girls was released to the public[1], the movie made $130.5 million worldwide. After the movie’s success, Wiseman argued that she deserved more compensation for being the main inspiration for a film with such a cultural impact. When Wiseman’s lawyers reached out to Paramount Pictures, Paramount had shown no interest in providing Wiseman with additional compensation. A theater company later approached Wiseman to create a rendition of the film, but both Paramount and Fey declined the offer. A few years later, Paramount and Fey released Mean Girls, the musical, without Wiseman. When Mean Girls, the musical, appeared on Broadway and Mean Girls (2024 film) was released, Wiseman did not receive any compensation. When Wiseman questioned Paramount about the pay, they said she no longer owns the rights. Paramount proceeded to tell Wiseman that no money had been made from the hit movie. Fey is open about her inspiration for Mean Girls being from the book, but Fey does not fight for Wiseman to make any more money from the franchise. Wiseman also assisted Fey in creating a musical rendition of the movie to help educate high school students. Wiseman did not receive any payment for her assistance on the project, nor did she receive compensation for her behind-the-scenes work with the actors and actresses on the set of Mean Girls.[1]
…Organized in collaboration with HeadCount to promote voting in the 2020 United States presidential election, it was the first time the entire cast gathered since the 2004 premiere. Paramount Pictures released the entire film for free streaming on TikTok in 23 snippets to celebrate Mean Girls Day 2023. The hashtag “#meangirlsday” was one of the top trends on the platform that month.
Writers Guild of America Strike
[edit]
On October 3, 2023, the TikTok account “Mean Girls” posted a sequence of twenty-three videos featuring the entirety of the Mean Girls movie to celebrate “Mean Girls Day.” When the account uploaded these videos to TikTok, the 2023 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike had just come to an end. The WGA strike involved screenwriters striking against production companies to update the current system regarding their residuals. Posting the movie on TikTok allows the person running the account, as well as the production company, to make all profits without having to pay the writers or actors their residuals from it. People saw this as a way for Paramount to circumvent the new contract resulting from the WGA strike, as the contract did not include paying screenwriters’ residuals for social media uploads. Re-uploading movies without paying the screenwriters or actors’ residuals is nothing new, though. Before TikTok, it was common to find people re-uploading movies onto other social platforms, such as YouTube, and taking full compensation for it. Now that the re-uploading culture has migrated to TikTok, production studios view this as another means of avoiding payment of residuals.[4]
In 2025, Megan Loucks from InSession Film gave the film an “A Grade,” praising its character work and “most quotable and memorable scenes.” She commends its relevance in current culture, even twenty-one years after the film’s release. Loucks recalls watching the movie for the first time as a young teenager, realizing the significance of kindness to one another in a movie that perfectly encapsulates girlhood. “Mean Girls works as well as it does thanks to Tina Fey’s script that is equal parts hilarious comedy and social commentary on how absolutely dreadful high school is.” She continued to applaud Waters and Fey’s way of developing the characters through the film, describing how each of them is different, and summarized what it is like to be in high school again.[5]
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 after her overprotective and clueless parents move to North America after her mother got offered tenure at Northwestern University. She has trouble making friends and is put down by the teachers on her first day, by being confused about the rules that she hasn’t had to follow up to this point. Including having to raise her hand to use the bathroom, looking both ways on the street for school buses, sitting in spots of her classmates without realizing the assigned seating, and unable to understand the stereotypes the lunchroom brings. Although she does befriend outcasts Janis Ian and Damian Leigh. Janis is the artistic and sarcastic friend while her friend Damian is both knowledgeable of the school’s cliques, fashionable, and flamboyant. Janis and Damian explain the school’s various cliques to her while outside, observing the gym class from afar. Here, her new friends warn her about the “Plastics”, a trio of wealthy and 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 after saving Cady from a mildly sexual and unwanted conversation with Jason, the guy Gretchen has an eye on throughout the film. Upon Janis and Damian realizing this, Janis hatches a plan to infiltrate the group and destroy Regina’s reputation after having her own unfortunate past experience with the queen bee.
Cady becomes infatuated with her classmate who sits in front of her in her calculus class, Aaron Samuels. Karen and Gretchen warn her that, as Regina’s ex-boyfriend, he is off-limits, and that those are just the rules of feminism. Though Regina assures Cady she does not care if Cady and Aaron date, as it was Regina that dumped Aaron. Despite Janis’s insistence that Regina is “evil”, 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.” However, at a Halloween house party, instead of talking to Aaron on Cady’s behalf, Regina kisses him in front of her and resumes their relationship. Feeling betrayed, an enraged Cady fully commits to Janis’s plan after understanding Janis and her hatred for the group.
Meanwhile, Regina passes the halloween party while driving with her boyfriend at the time, seeing all those that attended after Regina was kicked out of the group. Already upset, she takes a bite out of the “diet” bar Cady gave her to lose weight then being told from her boyfriend that the bar actually makes her gain weight, hence her having to where sweatpants that one day, breaking the cliques dress code, and getting kicked out of the group. Regina becomes enraged when she discovers Cady’s sabotage and inserts fake slander of herself into the Burn Book, hoping to frame the latter, along with Gretchen and Karen for it.
Critical Response
In 2020, Hornaday an author for The Washington Post included Mean Girls at No. 8 in her list “The 34 Best Political Movies Ever Made”. She wrote: “[I]n addition to the usual adolescent high jinks and catty comebacks, screenwriter Tina Fey managed to create an incredibly insightful taxonomy of hierarchical power created by clique culture as it is amassed, wielded and ultimately dismantled — all within the complicated context of high school politics, Queen Bee-enforced gender norms and internalized sexism, this was seen in the movie by comments that gendered weight, Regina one of the main characters in Mean Girls quotes “I really wanna lose three pounds” which Regina does in hopes of getting interest of her male classmates. That’s a lot to accomplish, even if we never exactly made ‘fetch’ happen“. In March 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker ranked Lohan’s performance as the eleventh best of the 21st century up to that point, praising her “blend of charisma and awkwardness, innocence and guile” as well as “faux-casual earnestness” she used for dialogue and overall performance. In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked Mean Girls as the twentieth greatest comedy of the 21st century, saying: “Tina Fey established herself as one of America’s best comedy writers courtesy of this instant teen-movie classic, which boasts one of the most quotable scripts of the past 20 years”, while IndieWire ranked it as the fifteenth best comedy of the 21st century, calling the script “effortlessly funny, but what makes the film truly timeless has more to do with the actors’ ability to find the human grace notes amid the absurd high school hijinks (Kälteen Bars, anyone?) and instant-classic one-liners (“That’s so fetch”). It’s a high school comedy with broad genre humor and specific insight into teenage anxieties, but also plays into the bullying and gossip that surrounds high school, “ bullying tactics associated with indirect aggression
include gossiping, social exclusion, stealing friends, not talking to someone, and
threatening to withdraw friendship” (Ryalls, pg.6). These are all topics that are continuously mentioned in Mean Girls and for that, it stands the test of time.” In October 2022, The Independent also included Lohan’s role in a list of “outstanding performances”, stating that she “gives a pretty flawless performance, dexterously balancing the film’s irreverent comic tone with moments of occasional pathos.” In 2025, it ranked number 82 on the “Readers’ Choice” edition of The New York Times‘ list of “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.”
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 with the help of from scratch borrowing elements from her own experiences during childhood, she says in an interview, when she was younger, her mom would compliment another person’s clothing to mock them. In the movie a similar scene is shown when Regina compliments Lea Edwards’ skirt but as she walks away says “that is the ugliest f-ing skirt i’ve ever seen”. Fey also borrowed ideas from her time at Upper Darby High School. For example, in an interview she says, “I remember being a freshman [in the first year of highschool] and an older girl coming up to me. She told me I was pretty and when I thanked her, she was like ‘Oh, so you think you’re pretty?’ It was a trap.” This scenario was replicated in the movie between Regina and Cady. She also used her impressions of the nearby schools, 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. More of the familiar phrases and scenes in Mean Girls come from Wisemans’ book such as the idea of “Girl-World’ coming from many aspects of the book but namely appearing on chapter 2 titled “Passport from Planet Parent to Girl World: communication and Reconnaissance” as well as the map that Janis draws for Cady which has similarities to the map that students in Wisemans’ Empower course provided her in chapter chapter 1 titled “Cliques and Popularity”, pages 42-45 of the first edition.
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 Glenn Coco is named after a friend of Fey’s older brother; the real Glenn Coco works as a film editor in Los Angeles. 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.
“Mean Girls.” Wikipedia,WikimediaFoundation,25Sept.2005,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls.
Bentley, D.M.R. “The Source and Structure of Girl World: Tina Fey’s Mean Girls and Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 45 no. 4, 2019, p. 143-164. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esc.2019.0021.
Ellis, Katie. “Tina Fey on Creating Mean Girls: ‘There Were Real Mean Girls Back in My High-School Days.’” HELLO!, Hellomagazine, 22 Jan. 2024, www.hellomagazine.com/film/511783/tina-fey-exclusive-mean-girls-reboot-how-she-updated-the-comedy-classic/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2025.
Handy, Bruce. “How Tina Fey Turned a Self-Help Manual for Anxious Mothers into ‘Mean Girls.’” Airmail.news, Air Mail, 10 May 2025, airmail.news/issues/2025-5-10/the-mean-girls-next-door. Accessed 27 Sept. 2025.
Johnson, Tonisha. “April 2004 | Blackfilm.com | Features | Interviews | an Interview with Tina Fey.” Www.blackfilm.com, 2004, www.blackfilm.com/20040423/features/tinafey.shtml. Accessed 27 Sept. 2025.
Nabilah, Danah Inas. 2019. Male And Female’S Gossip In Mean Girls Movie (2004). Thesis. English Department, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. State Islamic University of Sunan Ampel Surabaya https://www.academia.edu/117419360/Male_and_females_gossip_in_Mean_Girls_movie_2004_
Ryalls, Emily. The Culture of Mean: Gender, Race, and Class in Mediated Images the Culture of Mean: Gender, Race, and Class in Mediated Images of Girls’ Bullying of Girls’ Bullying.
Su, C., Zhou, H., Gong, L., Teng, B., Hu, Y., & Geng, F. (2021, May 2). Viewing personalized video clips recommended by TikTok activates default mode network and ventral tegmental area. NeuroImage. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811921004134
Walderzak, Joseph. “Man-Candy, Hot Body, and an Army of Skanks: Mean Girls as Revisionist Text and the Teen Film Genre.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 36, no. 6, 20 June 2019, pp. 498–519, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2019.1593016.
Wiseman, Rosalind. Queen Bees & Wannabes : Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. 1st ed., Three Rivers Press, 2002.
Fake compliment scene (Mean Girls 2004) https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=mean+girls+complimenting+skirt+clip&mid=5ED3D46239BFE4A365875ED3D46239BFE4A36587&FORM=VIRE
really wanna lose three pounds scene 2004 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NHkl4FLOs7s
You’re really pretty scene (Mean Girls 2004) https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=oh+you+think+you%27re+pretty+mean+girls+scene&mid=78EE881A29941E33DE8D78EE881A29941E33DE8D&FORM=VIRE
