Last month, cast members from 2004’s Mean Girls — including Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, and more — reunited for a series of Walmart commercials, but one person was notably missing: the one-time leader of The Plastics herself, Rachel McAdams. Now, in a new interview, McAdams has offered a perfectly Regina George-esque explanation for her absence.
“I don’t know; I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest,” she revealed to Variety. “A movie sounded awesome, but I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag.”
Continuing, McAdams clarified that she was unaware of the “reunion” angle of the ads. “I didn’t know that everyone was doing it,” she said. “I would, of course, always love to be part of a Mean Girls reunion and hang with my plastics, but yeah, I found that out later.”
The commercials — which premiered in early November ahead of Black Friday — featured Lohan, Seyfried, and Chabert reprising their roles alongside Daniel Franzese and Rajiv Surendra. Also included was Missy Elliott, who wasn’t in the original film, but did have her song “Pass That Dutch” featured on the soundtrack.
As exciting as it is to see the characters back together, the “Walmart ad” part of the commercials takes the viewer out of the experience a bit, leaving one wondering what a feature-length Mean Girls reunion would be like. That may be what McAdams is wondering, too, but in the meantime, fans can at least look forward to next year’s adaptation of the Mean Girls Broadway musical, which is set to premiere on January 12th.
Tina Fey and Tim Meadows are reprising their roles for that film, but it appears that they’ll be the only original cast members returning. In the Variety interview, McAdams touched on that, too, explaining: “Tina and I sort of dabbled with a few ideas, but it was tough to make it all work in the end.”
Nevertheless, the upcoming film has the McAdams — and, thus, the original Regina George — stamp of approval. “I was really down for whatever [Fey] wanted to do,” she said. “I think the direction it went in will be fantastic and I cannot wait to see it.”