‘This is a futile exercise’

Key points

• Rachel McAdams originally auditioned to play protagonist Cady Heron in Mean Girls.

• However, the film’s director, Mark Waters, told her that she was “too old” for the part when she was 25.

• McAdams was ultimately cast as the villainous Regina George, a role Lindsay Lohan originally wanted.

Rachel McAdams played an iconic villain in Mean Girls — but she didn’t originally want the part.

The actress recently reflected on auditioning for Cady Heron, the protagonist Lindsay Lohan portrayed in the 2004 comedy classic.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is a futile exercise. I will never be hired for Cady,'” McAdams told PEOPLE in a new interview, noting that she didn’t feel like she had enough experience to lead a studio comedy. “I was just starting out, and it was the main character.”

McAdams didn’t expect to get the role. “I just did not think I was at that point in my life where I would be chosen for that. So I just kind of went in and had fun,” she said, adding that she would have been thrilled to play any part in Tina Fey’s teen comedy. “I loved the script so much. I remember closing that script and calling up my manager and saying, ‘Please, even just playing a character that has one line I would take.'”

The Game Night actress said Mean Girls filmmaker Mark Waters ended up offering her a very different part instead. “‘You’re too old to play Cady, but you’re just right for Regina [George],'” McAdams, who was 25 when the film was shot, remembered Waters saying. “[He said,] ‘Regina has been around the block a few times and maybe has a, I don’t know if I’d call her an old soul, but she’s got a few more miles on her than Cady’… so I took it as a compliment.”

Waters, who had directed Lohan in Freaky Friday the year before Mean Girls, said he originally envisioned the Parent Trap actress as Regina. “I convinced everyone that Lindsay should be playing Regina, not Cady,” he told Variety in 2024. “Lindsay’s energy is much more like Regina — I don’t mean that in a negative way — she’s just much more forceful and a really strong personality. I remember reading the Regina scenes with her and she was amazing.”

Casting Lohan as Regina, however, made it tough to find the right Cady.

“When we went to cast Cady, we couldn’t find anybody,” he recalled. “I actually read an actress from Canada for the part and I told her, ‘You’re way too old for this part, but I think you’re a movie star, you’re amazing.’ It was Rachel McAdams.”

Waters and the rest of the Mean Girls team realized that there was still a place for McAdams in the cast. “When we couldn’t cast Cady, we went back to Rachel for Regina,” he said. “And her reading a little bit older worked because it brought a certain power and maturity to it.”

The filmmaker added that Lohan seemed a little hesitant to abandon the role of Regina. “She was a little bummed — she thought Regina was more fun,” he said. “But she ended up embracing it.”

McAdams told PEOPLE that she enjoyed portraying Regina. “Playing the villain is the best,” she said. “I’ve heard that maybe luck gets your foot in the door, but it doesn’t keep you in the room. I don’t know who said that, but I think that’s really true.”

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McAdams can currently be seen in Send Help, the latest horror-comedy from Sam Raimi, with whom she previously worked for 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

“I wanted to have a big, splashy, normal-sized experience with Sam,” she told Entertainment Weekly after working on the Marvel blockbuster. “It really felt like it was just a taste, and I wanted more.”

Send Help is playing now in theaters.

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