See Kate Rockwell, Taylor Louderman and Ashley Park as Karen Smith, Regina George and Gretchen Wieners, respectively.
- Sep 6, 2017
AceShowbiz - First look at "Mean Girls" musical has made its way out online via Entertainment Weekly. The picture introduces the Plastics, played by Kate Rockwell (Karen Smith), Taylor Louderman (Regina George) and Ashley Park (Gretchen Wieners). The threesome looks sassy in their matching pink dresses and high heels while holding a phone each.
Gushing about the three Broadway stars, Tina Fey who wrote the original movie says, "Taylor Louderman not only has this giant voice and great comic timing, but she instinctively understood the idea of Regina George, that there's power in making people come to you. She knows exactly when to play things really small, and there's so much power in it, and I think she's at times so wonderfully scary but so funny."
"Kate Rockwell so quickly found the zone of the sweetness that's at the core of Karen," she continues. "And Ashley has this incredible, beautiful voice, but also this nice timing and this fragility of Gretchen, because Gretchen's, like...just barely hanging on to her status and her sanity."
Fey reveals it was her husband, "30 Rock" composer Jeff Richmond, who first came up with the idea of a "Mean Girls" musical. "It was probably my husband, Jeff, who said, 'You know what? This could work as a musical.' And I trusted him to know that, having that background," she shares.
Fey says she revisited the original source material, Rosalind Wiseman's book "Queen Bees & Wannabes", when she started working on the project. "I tried to remember to stay at the core humanity of it, which is the behavior that comes out of all of us sometimes out of jealousy or fear," she explains.
She goes on teasing, "The great thing about music is it lets you get in people's heads and inside their emotional lives in a way that you can do with a tight close-up in movies, but it's so much bigger and warmer [in a musical]. I think fans will hopefully find that this has the DNA of the movie and is true to the spirit of it, but is also opened up in a lot of ways."
Five years in the making, the musical is set to arrive at arrive at D.C.'s National Theatre on October 31 for a try-out run before hitting Broadway theater. Erika Henningsen takes the lead role as Cady Heron, the home-schooled teenager entering high school for the first time. The character was played by Lindsay Lohan in the film.
Other cast members include Barrett Wilbert Weed as Janis Sarkisian, Grey Henson as Damian Hubbard, Kerry Butler as Ms. Norbury, Kyle Selig as Aaron Samuels, Cheech Manohar as Kevin Gnapoor, and Rick Younger as Mr. Duvall.
Casey Nicholaw directs and choreographs the Broadway-bound musical, which will feature music by Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Nell Benjamin ("Legally Blonde").
