Tina Fey Says There Are No More Mean Girls Iterations Coming: ‘I Promise’

Fey has worked on two ‘Mean Girls’ movies, as well as the Broadway musical that opened in 2018

Tina Fey is saying goodbye to North Shore High.

Fey, 55, sat down with Damian Holbrook at the HISTORYTalks event at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on April 18.

During their conversation, the 30 Rock star opened up about Mean Girls, which started as a 2004 film, before becoming a Broadway musical in 2018 and then a movie musical incorporating the songs in 2024.

“We always, in every iteration, tried to honor the source material, which is like a sociology book about how to help girls through relational aggression and behaviors like that,” Fey explained.

“It’s like, yes, everyone loves the Plastics. They have the best outfits. We don’t want to emulate them, ultimately. We want to pay attention to the fact that their behavior does take them down,” she added.

Although it has been more than 20 years since the original film premiered, the Saturday Night Live alum joked that they won’t be reimagining the story anymore.

“I promise there are no more iterations coming,” Fey said.

She maintained, though, that every actor who has approached the project in any iteration “always” brings a “3D humanity to those characters.”

Fey added, “I think that’s what’s made that movie so lasting.”

In the first film, the main cast included Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert.

“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,’ ” McAdams, 47, recalled to PEOPLE about her initial audition. She initially read for Cady Heron, whom Lohan, 39, ended up playing.

Rapp, 26, later reprised her role as Regina in the movie musical, but Carpenter, 26, did not return. Instead, Angourie Rice played Cady, Auli’i Cravalho was Janis Ian and The Summer I Turned Pretty star Christopher Briney played Aaron Samuels.

“This is a very specific version of the musical that has a really specific place in a niche, culty theater way, that I think expands it to maybe people who aren’t super into theater,” Rapp told PEOPLE at the time.

Fey also returned as North Shore High math teacher Ms. Norbury alongside Tim Meadows as Principal Duvall. She crafted the film’s script and was a producer with SNL showrunner Lorne Michaels.

Rounding out the 2023 film’s cast were Busy Philipps, Jenna Fischer and Jon Hamm, who were new to the Mean Girls universe.

“Twenty years later, it’s just as poppin’ as it was when it came out,” Rapp said in a behind-the-scenes featurette from the movie’s 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition about how Mean Girls has lived on in people’s hearts. “It’s just become such a cultural staple, predicting trends.”

As for what Fey has been up to lately, she recently hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live UK, which premiered on March 21.

“My name is Tina Fey. Here in the U.K., you might know me as the teacher from Mean Girls, or you might remember a long time ago when I played Sarah Palin on SNL US,” she said during the monologue.

Special guests were also there to cheer Fey on, including Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan and actor Michael Cera.

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“I think you just swore a second ago, you said the F- word,” Cera, 37, joked during his appearance from the audience. Fey responded, “Yeah, we are allowed to swear in this version of the show.”

Via: People