How ‘Freakier Friday’ Slyly Remakes Another Classic Lindsay Lohan Movie

Disney’s Freakier Friday, the legacy sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday, has arrived in cinemas to mostly positive reviews from critics and fans alike. The film is a victory lap for fans of the original; but most importantly for star Lindsay Lohan, who here makes her return to a major Hollywood blockbuster after years on the Netflix Christmas movie comeback trail.

One aspect of the film which has most enraptured audiences are its ties to another classic Lohan comedy, The Parent Trap. Both The Parent Trap (1998) and Freaky Friday (2003) were Lohan-starring Disney remakes of classic studio films, and now Freakier Friday essentially remixes the formula and presents itself as a sequel to Freaky Friday, which is also a remake of The Parent Trap. Did you keep up with that? Here’s how the two films are intertwined, including that major cameo.

Is Freakier Friday a remake of The Parent Trap?

It hasn’t been officially touted as such, but the plot of Freakier Friday mirrors The Parent Trap to an eerie specificity. The plot concerns teenage Harper (Julia Butters), daughter of Anna (Lohan) and granddaughter of Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), trying to break up her mother’s marriage to Eric (Manny Jacinto) because she can’t cope with her future stepsister, Lily (Sophia Hammons).

When the four women switch bodies, Harper (in Anna’s body) and Lily (in Tess’ body) decide that they can break their parents up once and for all. That means that surf-crazy Harper won’t have to move to Lily and Eric’s native London, where there’s little waveage to score. Audiences will recall that’s basically a reversal of The Parent Trap’s plot, in which twin sisters (both played by Lohan)—one from Napa and the other from London—switch places and hatch a scheme to convince their parents (Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson) to dump their horrid partners and get back together.

Do any Parent Trap cast members appear in Freakier Friday?

Yes, there’s one major cameo from a Parent Trap alumnus, which serves as more of a head bang (rather than a nod) to the audience about the movie’s intentions. Midway through Freakier Friday, Elaine Hendrix turns up playing a character named Blake Kale, the PR rep for a magazine featuring Anna’s client, singer Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). Hendrix memorably played Meredith Blake, the fiancée to Quaid’s character in The Parent Trap and ostensibly the film’s villain, though in recent years her character’s arc has been reassessed by some on social media. Hendrix is very clearly not playing Meredith Blake in Freakier Friday, but Blake shares many of Meredith’s tendencies. She even refers to Anna and Tess (er, Harper and Lily) as “puss,” the same term she used to refer to Lohan’s characters in The Parent Trap.