Mean Girls almost cast A-list actress in lead role

Cult teen movie Mean Girls almost looked very different, as it’s revealed a major star just missed out on a lead part in the flick.

Mean Girls producers almost cast Blake Lively in one of the lead roles.

Mean Girls received rave reviews when it first hit cinemas back in 2004, and has built a legacy as a pop culture phenomenon in the years since.

But the Lindsay Lohan-led teen flick almost looked very different, with US actress Amanda Seyfried – who played the ditzy Karen Smith – revealing a last-minute casting shake-up ultimately iced out an eventual A-list actress from starring.

At one stage during the audition process two decades ago, Seyfried, now 37, was instead testing for the role of ‘Queen Bee’ Regina George, which ultimately went to Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, now 44.

Mean Girls premiered to critical and commercial acclaim in 2004.

As for Seyfried’s role of Karen? It’s been revealed Blake Lively was in the running for the character.

Seyfried told Vanity Fair: “I met Lacey Chabert (who played Gretchen Wieners) for the first time and Lindsay Lohan (Cady Heron) was in the room and Blake Lively was playing Karen, and then I was Regina,” Seyfried said.

“I flew home [from the audition] and they were like, ‘We think you’re more correct for Karen. So I was like, ‘Oh god, OK, sure.”’

Blake Lively was auditioning for the role of Karen Smith in Mean Girls.

But it went to Amanda Seyfried – in what was her feature film debut.

If she was cast, it would’ve marked Lively’s debut as a lead in a feature film, but it didn’t take too long for her to get lucky. Just a year later, she landed the role of Bridget in the beloved Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants franchise, and of course, Gossip Girl came calling shortly after in 2007.

Mean Girls casting director Marci Liroff previously said Lively was their number one pick to play Karen, before they went in a different direction.

Just a year later, Blake Lively starred in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

“We wanted Blake Lively, who hadn’t done The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants yet, for Karen,” Liroff told Cosmopolitan UK.

“She came down to the final tests but, at some point, some of the filmmakers said to keep looking.”

Reports have been swirling for years of a potential sequel with the original cast, though nothing has ever eventuated.

In a 10th anniversary special for Entertainment Weekly, Mean Girls screenwriter and star Tina Fey said she regretted not making it happen closer to the first film’s release.

“At the time we did want to start the conversation about the sequel, and for whatever reason I was like, ‘No! We shouldn’t do that!’ Now I look back and I’m like, ‘Why?’ But now, no — it’s too late now,” Fey told the publication.

Originally published as Mean Girls almost cast A-list actress in lead role