(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Pictures)
Tue 18 November 2025 3:30, UK
Some actors are happy to be associated with a certain role, which is especially true for television, which can see people embodying a part for decades, but for Rachel McAdams, who rose to prominence in the early 2000s with parts in hit movies like The Notebook and Mean Girls, she has actually turned down several chances to reprise her most iconic role.
She’s a versatile star, after all, and she’s got plenty of other projects to get on with rather than going back to old ones, especially if the reason is purely commercial. If you’re a fan of McAdams’ portrayal of queen bee Regina George, the bitchy blonde leader of the Plastics, don’t get your hopes up about seeing an older version of the character cropping up any time soon, as the actor isn’t interested unless the conditions are just right.
Mean Girls remains one of the most quotable teen movies ever made, and McAdams was the perfect Regina, so likeable despite her hideousness, coming out with some stupid lines, like “Is butter a carb?”, while also delivering some pretty clever insults, using her social standing to get exactly what she wants.
Equally admired, feared, and hated by the rest of the school (“One time she punched me in the face, it was awesome”), Regina is one of the most iconic bullies to ever grace the screen, and she brutally gets what’s coming for her at the end of the film when a bus slams into her as she spouts some rather cruel lines at Cady, leaving her in a back brace for the Spring Fling.
Even though McAdams has gone on to star in many other fantastic films, she’ll perhaps always be best known as Regina to most, and while she’s proud of the role, she decided not to bring her back when given the chance.
An advertisement for Walmart saw some of the Mean Girls cast reunite, but the absence of McAdams wasn’t because of any bad blood; while the other core cast members, Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried chose to return for the ad, the Plastics leader tayed away as she isn’t really into the idea of bringing Regina back simply for commercial reasons.
It’s one thing to reprise your role in a sequel, but there’s something about doing an advert as your character that didn’t sit right with her, perhaps because she thought it would cheapen her position in Hollywood, for, let’s be real, sometimes doing a commercial feels like an indicator that an actor is tight on cash.
She explained her feelings in an interview with Variety, stating, “I don’t know; I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest. A movie sounded awesome, but I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag. Also…I didn’t know that everyone was doing it.”
Still, she’s not against returning if the time is right: “I would, of course, always love to be part of a Mean Girls reunion and hang with my Plastics, but yeah, I found that out later”. She might not have cameoed in the new Mean Girls movie musical, but there’s still hope she’ll reprise her role as the character at some point in the future, although who knows what adult Regina could possibly be up to.
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