Paramount(NEW YORK) — It may not be Wednesday, but we give you permission to wear pink anyway in celebration of Mean Girls’ 15th anniversary today.
The 2004 Tina Fey comedy starred Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a formerly home-schooled teen who gets entangled with the most popular girls in school, led by Rachel McAdams as Queen Bee Regina George.
The movie not only spawned popular catchphrases — including “So fetch,” “You go Glen Coco!” and “I’m not like a regular mom, I’m a cool mom” — it has also lived on in other incarnations. A Mean Girls musical is currently running on Broadway and Ariana Grande famously referenced the flick in her record-breaking “thank u, next” music video.
Daniel Franzese, who played Cady’s gay BFF, Damian, in the film says he loves that Mean Girls is still finding new ways to resonate with people. For him, making the movie had personal significance.
“Personally, for Damian, I know that it was the first time that a lot of people saw a queer character of size survive a movie without like being shoved in a locker or have his head like dunked in a toilet,” he tells ABC Radio.
He adds, “It gave a lot of people…a representation of [themselves] in media that they could look to, to sort of just feel comfortable in their own skin.”
Franzese will celebrate the Mean Girls anniversary with a comedy show at New York City’s Comic Strip Live tonight, featuring special appearances by his co-stars Jonathan Bennett, who played heartthrob Aaron Samuels, and Rajiv Surendra, who played rapping Mathlete Kevin G.
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