Lizzy Caplan Says Studio Wanted Kelly Osbourne for Mean Girls Role

Turns out, Lizzy Caplan had to fight to win the role of Janis Ian in the 2004 comedy Mean Girls.

“It was just the funniest script I had ever read,” she said of the film during the Thursday, November 20, episode of Penn Badgley’s “Podcrushed” podcast. “I wanted to be in it so bad. I fought so hard and then it worked out. Everybody had to audition, I think, for one of the two main [roles]: Cady, the Lindsay Lohan part, or the Rachel McAdams part.”

She continued, “I went in and they were resistant to casting me. Somebody reminded me of this recently: the studio wanted Kelly Osbourne to play that role.”

She solicited the help of a hairstylist, she explained, who assisted her in coming up with an idea of how the character would look in the movie.

“We went to Hollywood Boulevard and put on dark wigs and just anything to send them screen grabs of me looking like a goth kid,” Caplan revealed. “I don’t remember how long the process was, but I remember getting the phone call and where I was when I got the phone call that I got the part. How many times has that really happened to you in your career: that you just want to celebrate and it’s nothing but exciting?”

The rest, of course, is history. Caplan went on to star in the hit movie, created by Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey, alongside Lohan, McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. The film made more than $24 million opening weekend, going on to gross an estimated $130 million worldwide.

Caplan continued to find success on the small screen following the movie’s release, landing roles on True Blood, The Class, Party Down and New Girl. She also played Virginia Johnson on Masters of Sex from 2013 to 2016, and enjoyed a leading role in the second season of Castle Rock.

Despite her continued success on both the big and small screen, the actress has not fully shut the door on potentially starring in a Mean Girls sequel.

“I am so on board with this return of Lindsay Lohan,” she told Grazia USA in 2022, after Lohan, 39, had expressed interest in a second film.“I’m just pumped. She was such an incredible talent when she was working as a kid and a young adult so I’m happy to see that she’s coming back.”

While she wasn’t quite sure what a potential sequel or reboot could be like, Caplan added that if Fey, 55, came up with something, she would be onboard.

“Of course I would want to be a part of it; I would be an idiot not to join,” she said. “But to me it feels like Mean Girls had a really good beginning, middle and end. I don’t know what’s left of the story.”

Lohan was effusive when expressing her interest in a potential sequel to the popular film.

“That would be my dream to come back and film a sequel to Mean Girls,” Lohan said during an April 2020 appearance on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live. “I think there definitely is momentum towards it.”

In the same month, she said on Lights Out With David Spade: “I think I was hanging on to [Mean Girls] for a really long time. I wanted to come back with a Mean Girls 2 with the same cast, work with Tina and the whole crew again, and [director] Mark Waters. That was really what I wanted; I was excited to do that. But that’s all in their hands, really.”