Ashley Park has been cast in Paramount Pictures’ upcoming Mean Girls movie musical. According to Entertainment Tonight, she will have a cameo role in the adaptation after first portraying Gretchen Wieners in the Broadway musical. Park was a part of the original Broadway cast and earned a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for the role. In 2018, the production received 12, including one for Best Musical. She has since become a familiar face as Mindy Chen on Netflix’s Emily in Paris. Park has also worked with Fey on Girls5Eva, playing one of the original members of the girl group. In addition to Park, the ensemble cast includes Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Jenna Fischer, Busy Philipps, Avantika, Christopher Briney, and Bebe Wood. Filming on the movie will begin on March 6, according to Fey.
It is based on a musical adaptation of the 2004 hit film by Fey, directed by Arturo Perez, and written by Samantha Jayne. The upcoming film adaptation also was reported to include Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried from the original 2004 movie — but talks with the actors have allegedly stalled. The four original stars wanted to appear in the film, but an insider claims Paramount is not offering them high enough salaries. “Paramount Pictures doesn’t want to pay the girls what they are worth,” a production source told Page Six. “All four girls were willing to come back, but Paramount has not been respectful of what they are worth.” During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Fey joked about reprising her role as teacher Ms. Norbury, “Teachers work forever. I want it to be like when Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island would be at a trade show and you’d be like, ‘Oh, he looks so old in his little hat.’ That’s my goal.”
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When Meyers asked Fey if the musical score would change for the movie version, she said, “The songs are sounding really more kinda pop. In Broadway, everything has to play to the back of the house and in movies, everything can come back in and things can play really intimately.” When it closed on Broadway, the musical grossed $124 million. A total of 805 performances and 29 previews had taken place at Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre when the musical closed on March 11. Mean Girls had its world premiere run at the National Theatre in Washington D.C. in 2017 before opening on April 8, 2018. “We remain excited to bring this musical to the big screen, relaunch the tour and prepare for a London production,” said Lorne Michaels at the time, who produced the musical with Stuart Thompson, Sonia Friedman, and Paramount Pictures.
