XOXO, Mean Girl.
“Mean Girls” star Amanda Seyfried, 37, revealed “Gossip Girl” actress Blake Lively, 35, almost claimed her role as Karen Smith — the weather-predicting airhead — in Tina Fey’s 2004 cult classic.
“I’d flown out to LA for the first time with my mother. It was very exciting,” Seyfried told Vanity Fair in an interview posted Wednesday. “I met Lacey Chabert for the first time, and Lindsay Lohan was in the room, and Blake Lively was playing Karen, and then I was Regina.”
Seyfried reported that she left the room, waiting for a call to determine whether she’d play the most popular girl in school — but received a different offer.
“I flew home, and they were like, ‘We think you’re more correct for Karen,’” the Pennsylvania native recalled. “So I was like, ‘Oh God, OK, sure.’”
Marci Liroff, the “Mean Girls” casting director,” name-dropped Lively in a 2019 conversation with Cosmopolitan UK, explaining, “She came down to the final tests but, at some point, some of the filmmakers said to keep looking.”
“Amanda Seyfried had read for Regina, and we really liked her, but then [film producer] Lorne [Michaels] suggested, ‘Why don’t we make her Karen?’” Liroff recounted.
Luckily for Lively, she faced no shortage of work and went on to star in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” its sequel, “Gossip Girl,” “Accepted” and “Simon Says,” among other projects.
Liroff also revealed that “High School Musical” star Ashley Tisdale auditioned for the role of Gretchen Wieners, “but didn’t come down to the finals.” Chabert fetched the role instead.
While Seyfried’s presence in “Mean Girls” catapulted her to fame, the role also attracted some creepy male fans. The Emmy winner told Marie Claire last year that men would approach her and ask if it was raining, as her character Karen believed she could tell the forecast by holding her breasts.
“I always felt really grossed out by that,” Seyfried said. “I was like 18 years old. It was just gross.”
Seyfried and the three other “Mean Girls” leads — Chabert, Lohan and Rachel McAdams — have agreed to return for a “Mean Girls” movie for Paramount+, a small-screen version of the Broadway musical, but they were reportedly insulted by the streamer’s “disrespectful” proposed compensation.