By all accounts, the recently released “Mean Girls” musical remake has been a huge success for all involved. The film did well with critics and has outpaced the original film at the box office. All the while, the studio hid the musical aspect of the film in the marketing, which some might see as a bit deceitful. But according to Tina Fey, someone who helped create both versions of “Mean Girls,” the new film was met with a little backlash from one particular community, and it frustrates the hell out of her.
Speaking on the Las Culturistas podcast, Tina Fey was asked to vent some of her frustrations in a segment on the podcast. In that segment, Fey took aim at the Broadway purists who were mad that she made changes to a couple of lines in a musical number when the project moved from the stage to the big screen.
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“Little Broadway cunts on TikTok [are] complaining about two lines of ‘Revenge Party’ when I bring you fucking Reneé Rapp, I bring you Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey,” said Fey. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Obviously, when it’s written out, it looks really mean, but it’s clear that Fey is probably joking just a little and being a bit over-the-top with her language. But the frustration is seemingly real. She didn’t go into detail about the specifics that were changed, however, fans of both versions are likely able to figure it out.
Again, it’s important to note that the recently released “Mean Girls” is an adaptation of the Broadway musical that ran for years and was a huge hit. The studio made a film version of the musical, but in the marketing, made it seem as if the film was just a regular ol’ remake of the 2004 original. That said, the main constant in both of those is Fey, who stars in both and wrote both.
What she does highlight in her comment is the way social media seemingly just can’t be happy. You can have a full, big-budget adaptation of a popular stage musical that is largely faithful to both the original film and the stage version, yet people will nitpick everything. And it’s not just “Mean Girls” that suffers from this. All sorts of fandoms are keen to tear down projects. Maybe a costume doesn’t look right in a superhero film or a lightsaber is the wrong color in a ‘Star Wars’ project, and suddenly people are out for blood. If nothing else, we could learn to maybe just listen to Fey and not be so quick to trash something because it doesn’t live up to your own preconceived notions.
Or maybe just don’t nitpick. Yeah right, that’s probably asking way too much.