Key Points
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Jamie Lee Curtis reveals something that would’ve prevented her from being in Freaky Friday.
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“Balancing motherhood is a big part of our lives,” Curtis says in EW’s latest cover story.
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Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are next set to appear in the sequel Freakier Friday.
It’s hard to imagine tween-leaning pop culture in the early aughts without Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in the 2003 body-swapping comedy Freaky Friday, but the latter tells Entertainment Weekly that there was one element of the production that would have prevented her from joining the Disney classic’s cast.
In an exclusive cover story interview for the duo’s return in the studio’s upcoming sequel Freakier Friday, Curtis tells EW that the swiftness with which her casting came together led to a potential roadblock, which was thankfully cleared before cameras rolled on the Mark Waters-directed hit.
“I had a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old at home, with three days of prep before the original Freaky Friday,” Curtis says as she and Lohan discuss motherhood and its impact on their professional lives.
Waters previously revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that actresses Annette Bening and the late Michelle Trachtenberg were originally set to play the leads in Freaky Friday, but Bening dropped out days before shooting began, leading to Curtis’ casting.
Curtis confirms that “if it filmed outside California, I wouldn’t have been in the movie,” which was ultimately shot in and around Los Angeles.
“If it shot in Vancouver, I wouldn’t have done it, because I had kids,” Curtis adds, before relating the idea of parenthood to both Freaky Friday and Freakier Friday. “Balancing motherhood is a big part of our lives, but it’s also a big part of the movie. It’s the story of the movie.”
Freakier Friday was also shot in Southern California, with both actresses returning to reprise their roles as Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan), a mother-daughter duo who previously switched souls in the 2003 film thanks to an ancient spell. In the sequel, they again swap bodies, this time with Anna’s teen daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Lily (Sophia Hammons), ahead of Anna’s impending nuptials to a British restaurateur (Manny Jacinto).
Lohan, who also produced the film alongside Curtis, tells EW that her experience as a “new mom” to her 21-month-old son, Luai, also influenced how she saw the character and the kind of work she seeks at this stage of her career.
Alexi Lubomirski
Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis for ‘Entertainment Weekly’ cover story on ‘Freakier Friday’
“Everything I do is [about] what’s going to work for my family,” Lohan, who also recently landed a lead role in Hulu’s Count My Lies series adaptation, explains of choosing projects. “If something works around that, it’s meant to happen. If it doesn’t work around that, it’s a no-go.”
Of approaching Anna as a parent herself, Lohan says that she now understands “the closeness that you have with your child, and that bond — how irreplaceable that is, and wanting to do the right thing for your child — is always the most important thing in the world, and nothing can stand in the way of that.”
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She also knows that’s an understanding she couldn’t bring to her first Freaky Friday movie at 16.
“I also didn’t have the calmness that a mother needs to have when a child is losing it,” she continues. “Now, I get to play with that. I get to have those moments that Tess used to have with Anna.”
Freakier Friday is in theaters on Aug. 8.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
