Key Points
Mark Waters, who directed the 2003 movie Freaky Friday, says he wanted to be a part of the sequel, Freakier Friday.
According to a new interview, the filmmaker expressed his interest in serving as an executive producer or a more tertiary role.
But Waters says he “was not invited to the party.”
Freakier Friday brought back most of the cast from its 2003 predecessor, Freaky Friday, including stars Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis — but the sequel didn’t involve the original’s director, Mark Waters.
Waters, who also directed Lohan in Mean Girls, says that wasn’t for lack of interest. “Unfortunately, I was not invited to the party,” he said in a recent interview with Variety. “I did raise my hand and say I’d love to be involved somehow, even in a kind of godfather aspect or executive producer. But I was not extended an invitation.”
The new film was directed by Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) and has garnered positive reviews. Picking up two decades after Freaky Friday, it finds mother-daughter duo Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) once again swapping bodies, though not with each other this time.
Andrew Eccles/Disney
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in ‘Freakier Friday’
Waters said he’s “very supportive of them making a great new movie,” and added. “It would have been nice to be involved but now that I’m not, I sort of compartmentalize it for myself. I need to devote my energy to keep making new, original things that are going to be hits and people can remake them in 20 years. So that’s what I’m doing now. You can’t worry about the projects that you don’t do.”
The director also said he “heard from quite a few cast members while they were shooting, saying, ‘Where the hell are you, Waters?’ I have not forsaken you! I’m sorry.”
Representatives for Disney, the studio behind Freaky Friday and its sequel, didn’t immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.
Elsewhere in the interview, Waters addressed the original film’s depiction of Asian stereotypes and the sequel’s efforts to course-correct there. “I was fully aware that it was over the top,” he said, “and not in the way that I was trying to insult or make fun of any group. We’re doing this just to be absurd.”
Waters added that actress Rosalind Chao, who plays Chinese restaurant owner Pei-Pei in the two movies, “is a friend and she was in on the joke. But stepping back from it, of course it’s absolutely absurd but not in a way that is mean-spirited. Not from my perspective, nor do I think most people who watch the movie think of as being mean-spirited.”
Buena Vista/Courtesy Everett
Director Mark Waters, producer Andrew Gunn, and star Jamie Lee Curtis on the set of ‘Freaky Friday’
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Waters also said he acknowledged the criticism when it arose. “I remember there was a great reviewer who loved the movie but of course called that s‑‑‑ out,” he said. “[Said it] was tone deaf and a little bit over the top. But also noted it wasn’t in a way that ruined their enjoyment of the movie. I definitely didn’t go, ‘How would you ever come up with that?’ I’m like, ‘They have a point.'”
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