Now here’s some gossip, girl.
Amanda Seyfried casually mentioned that Blake Lively was almost cast as Karen in “Mean Girls” instead of her while participating in a video for Vanity Fair in which she revisited some of her most famous roles.
Seyfried mentioned Lively while explaining she had initially auditioned for the role of Regina (who was eventually played by Rachel McAdams).
“And I’d flown out to LA for the first time with my mother,” Seyfried recalled. “It was very exciting. 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.”
The “Dropout” star said that after she flew home, she got a call in which she was told casting thought she was better suited for the role of Karen.
Seyfried said she then enlisted the help of a comedic director, and together they came up with Karen’s signature whispery voice, which was inspired by Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot.”
“I remember the feeling of everybody really wanting to be there and really appreciating the ingenious of the script,” Seyfried said of the iconic teen comedy. I remember everybody having a lot of fun. There was just a vibe … they cast it right.”
Although the news that Lively could have played the ditzy character whose breasts can tell it’s raining thanks to her ESPN, this isn’t the first time Lively’s early involvement with “Mean Girls” has been mentioned publicly.
Mean Girls casting director Marci Liroff told Cosmopolitan in 2019 how the “Mama Mia” star was cast instead of Lively. Liroff told the magazine that “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels suggested they put Seyfried in the role.
“We wanted Blake Lively, who hadn’t done the ‘Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ yet, for Karen,” Marci said, noting that Blake had been the number one choice. “She came down to the final tests but, at some point, some of the filmmakers said to keep looking.”
She added: “Amanda Seyfried had read for Regina, and we really liked her but then Lorne suggested, ‘Why don’t we make her Karen?’”