For 'Freakier Friday,' Lindsay Lohan thought she'd 'be swapping with a baby'
Now is a great time to be a millennial.
The Backstreet Boys are pop-locking their way through a residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, and a sequel to 2003’s “Freaky Friday” arrives in theaters Aug. 8. But if you’ve been wistfully looking to the past, singing “I Want It That Way,” Chad Michael Murray, who’s back in the motorcycle saddle as Jake in “Freakier Friday,” cautions turning back the clock isn't always easy.
Jake makes his movie entrance on his bike. He removes his helmet and runs his fingers through his blond locks, a scene filmed at the end of a 12-hour day, the actor says.
“We had a microcosm of a moment to get the sunlight before the sun went down, and we couldn't shoot that moment,” says Murray, 43. But when trying to nail that seductive hands-through-the-hair shot with a day’s worth of product on his head, “it's not as smooth as you'd like it to be. So it took some finessing, some 'zhuzhing' as the team was calling it, to get there. Oof, it wasn't as easy as it looks.”
Are Anna and Jake together in 'Freakier Friday?'
More than two decades after angsty high school student Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) swapped bodies with her mom, psychologist Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis), thanks to some mystical fortune cookies, we’re reunited with the mother-daughter duo once more. Only this time, Anna is mom to a teenage daughter of her own, Harper Coleman (Julia Butters). And Tess, now a podcast host, is a bit of an overbearing grandmother.
Anna and Jake have remained friends, but she’s engaged to Londoner Eric Reyes (Manny Jacinto), single dad to Harper’s school nemesis Lily Reyes (Sophia Hammons).
“Jake can't hold a candle to Eric," Murray says on Anna's new love interest. "He's like a Disney Prince.”
“Before, Anna had no responsibilities,” says Lohan, 39. “She didn't care about anything else but her guitar and her band, and everything else was ruining her life. Now Anna has her daughter, and that is her life.”
Why did fans have to wait 22 years for another 'Freaky Friday' movie?
“There was no possible way we could have done a sequel to ‘Freaky Friday’ until Lindsay was old enough chronologically to be the mother of a 15-year-old,” says Curtis, 66. “So this just needed a time to cook.”
While promoting “Halloween Ends” in 2022, Curtis realized Lohan had finally aged into the role. “I counted on my fingers, and I was like, ‘How old is she?’ ” Curtis says. “I think she was 35 at the time. I was like: ‘Oh, wait a minute! She could’ve had a baby at 20!’ ”
So Curtis did what any well-respected and connected actress would do. “I picked up the phone and called (Disney CEO) Bob Iger and said, ‘I’m just letting you know I've been around the world and the only thing people want to know is when is there a "Freaky Friday" (sequel) and Lindsay is old enough to have a 15-year-old.’ ”
In real life, Lohan is mom to a 2-year-old son, Luai, whom she shares with husband Bader Shammas.
“Even though Jamie said she was doing the math,” Lohan says, “I was like, ‘OK, but then I had my daughter really, really young. Like, right after the first ‘Freaky Friday,’ (Anna) got pregnant.”
In fact, Lohan’s initial thoughts of Anna being a parent were “Am I going to be swapping with a baby?” she says. “I'm like, ‘How do I act like a toddler?’ ”
Who swaps bodies in 'Freakier Friday'?
But in the sequel, Anna swaps bodies with Harper and Tess with Lily the weekend of Anna and Eric’s wedding. The transformations take place after Anna’s bachelorette party during which the four women visited a fortune teller (Vanessa Bayer).
“We did a lot of crazy physical work,” Butters, 16, says of pulling off the exchange. “We wrote each other letters, as our characters, to build context.”
“We would voice each other's dialogue so we could hear how we the other would say it,” Lohan adds.
“Obviously, clothing helps,” says Curtis, who sports bold designs influenced by Lily’s interest in fashion. “But before that, it's behavior.
“They were like, ‘We brought in a movement coach.’ And I was like ... I need to observe Sophia. She needs to observe me. We need to say the lines. We have very specific things. I noticed that someone plays with her hair a lot.”
“I didn't realize how much I play with my hair, and I do,” says Hammons, 18. “It's when I'm nervous, when I'm just fiddling with something. It's a comfort thing, I guess.”
When the original castmates – Curtis, Lohan and Murray – reunited, “It felt like no time had passed,” Murray says. “As artists and as human beings, we're all so much more comfortable in our skin (now). So you get to play a little bit more.”
On the second day of filming, Lohan had the idea that Harper, who had awoken in her mom’s body, might run into the mirror thinking she was running toward her mom for help. And Curtis once again delivers lines about her appearance, giving viewers an updated version of, “I’m like the Crypt Keeper!” from the first film.
“For me, for someone who's (nearly) 67 and has made a lot about my face is what I look like … making fun of my face is a lot more fun than trying to look pretty,“ Curtis says. “So for me that part was easy.“