Amanda Seyfried is revealing which classic blonde bombshell partly inspired her performance in Mean Girls.
“It was sort of like, channeling a little bit of Some Like It Hot, Marilyn Monroe,” the Long Bright River star, 39, told GQ in a video, posted Thursday, March 20, looking back on some of her most iconic roles. “I just held onto that so tight, because I felt like that was the reason I got the role, and I didn’t trust my instincts so much as having a clear idea of who I thought this person was.”
The beloved 2004 teen comedy marked the then-17-year-old Seyfried’s film debut, starring as high school queen bee Karen Smith alongside Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan and Tina Fey. Her turn as the ditzy character definitely shared similarities with Monroe’s breezy performance as sultry singer Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk in director Billy Wilder’s iconic 1959 film.
“I can only speak for myself about the experience of making Mean Girls,” Seyfried said, “but I will say it felt like we weren’t really thinking about our characters as much as enjoying the process. Just enjoying, so much, being where we were, in a comedy with Tina. Because you’re younger, it’s different. It’s just different.”
“We were playing versions of ourselves,” she added, “and we understood the world [of the film] better than the crew members because we were that age.”
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Noting that she, Chabert and Lohan were all around the same age, Seyfried said that on weekends during the film’s shoot, she and her costars “would just get up to no good.”
“It was just kids having fun, you know, at camp,” she explained.
Seyfried said she believes the film — which spawned a 2011 made-for-TV sequel, a Broadway musical adaptation that was also turned into a 2024 film, and talk of a sequel reuniting the original cast — will “always be relevant.”
“I just think that Tina Fey just wrote such a beautiful reflection of what it’s like to be a teenage girl, and I think Mean Girls is really helpful for parents and kids, cause we make fun of the assholes, and the good, kind kids who are trying to figure out who they are prevail,” she explained.
“It stands the test of time,” she added. “It’s a beacon, in some way. I’m proud. I love it. I love when people tell me they love Mean Girls.”
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