Mean Girls Musical Just Cast The Best Part Of The Office
The Office's Jenna Fischer is taking over the role of Cady's Mom in The Mean Girls musical film from Ana Gasteyer
This is shaping up to be an exciting year in the gripping field of musical theater. The 12-time Tony award-nominated stage play based on the hit 2004 film Mean Girls is getting a film adaptation, courtesy of producers Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey. After previously announcing the casting of Tim Meadows, Angourie Rice, Jaquel Spivey, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Avantika, Christopher Briney, Bebe Wood, and Tina Fey herself, Deadline is reporting that The Office‘s Jenna Fischer has joined the cast.
Jenna Fischer starred in the US adaptation of The Office, which ran for 8 years from 2005 to 2013. In the show, Fischer played Pam Beesly, a receptionist turned office administrator engaged in a slow burn will-they won’t-they romance with John Krasinski’s Jim Halpert. After many years of dominating the ratings at NBC, Jim and Pam became household names for their excellently portrayed romance and suburban bliss. They eventually married and had a pair of children.
While Jenna Fischer didn’t appear in the 2004 original, several announced cast members are reprising their roles from Mean Girls in the upcoming reboot. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows are notable additions, each playing faculty at North Shore High School, where much of the film takes place. Tina Fey is a math teacher who mentors many of the girls who attend the school, while Tim Meadows portrays the absent-minded principal, Mr. Duvall.
The film revolves around a group of cruel teenage girls, led by Rachel McAdams‘ Regina George, as an outsider named Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, attempts to integrate into the group for fear that she may be viciously ridiculed otherwise. Mean Girls achieved near-immediate cult status, becoming a highly quotable smash hit with excellent comedic writing and wide audience appeal. While Spider-Man: No Way Home actress Angourie Rice is set to play Cady Heron, and Reneé Rapp is cast for Regina George, whom she played during the musical’s Broadway run, Jenna Fischer is set to replace Ana Gasteyer in the role of Cady’s mom.
The film is being produced by Paramount Pictures for Paramount+ and will give fans of the original who haven’t had the opportunity or money to see the Broadway performance a chance to hear the songs that had the academy showering the cast with Tony nominations. No stranger to award ceremonies herself, Jenna Fischer is a Primetime Emmy nominee for her incredible comedic talent on The Office, and her character Pam has dozens of Dundee awards from her time at the Scranton branch. There is currently no known timeline for the film’s streaming release, but Tina Fey has been hard at work adapting the play back into screenplay format, while the filmmaking duo of Arturo Perez and Samantha Jayne are set to direct.
With such an incredible cast and crew of talented creators and performers, it seems as though the Mean Girls reboot is destined for another instant hit. Will the Jenna Fischer-led film be able to convert nonmusical fans into bonafide theater freaks or find itself trying to make fetch happen? For now, we’ll have to wait and see.
