Fans had to wait a whopping 20 years to see more of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as their Freaky Friday characters, but there was a reason for the wait.
The beloved co-stars and real-life good friends have finally reunited as Tess and Anna for the long-awaited sequel Freakier Friday, which amps up the freakiness with a 4-way body swap.
Now, just days before the movie hits theaters, the Everything Everywhere All At Once actress is giving some insight into why she thought it best to wait so long for a follow-up to the 2003 film.
© Getty ImagesDuring an appearance on Good Morning America on Monday, July 28, Jamie Lee first maintained: "I was determined to make it happen because everywhere in the world I go for other work, all they want to talk about is Lindsay and Freaky Friday. That's all they wanted to talk about."
She recalled fans really demanding for it, however she would emphasize: "Yeah, great, love it, but the truth is that Lindsay has to be old enough to have a teenager."
In the sequel, Lindsay's character Anna is a mom to a 15-year-old, who doesn't get along with her future 15-year-old stepsister, Anna's fiancé's daughter.
© GettyLindsay, who in real life is 39, then noted how still, she'd have to have been a pretty young mom to have a teenager in the movie, as Jamie Lee added: "As soon as I understood that she was of age to have a teenager, even though you would be a very young mom, I knew that was [it.]"
"I just lobbied Disney very hard," she added, as GMA host George Stephanopoulos noted she went to "the top," aka to Disney CEO Bob Iger. "I've known Bob Iger since ABC, like early ABC when I was on Anything But Love. And I wrote him an email and he called me and we talked and now here we are," she said.
Lindsay is coming back to her character of Anna now as a mom herself — she shares two-year-old son Luai with husband Bader Shammas — and also opened up about what it was like playing a mom as a real-life mom now.
© Getty"It feels nice because I got to bring a lot of the emotions that go with being a mom into Anna's character, and I wanted Anna to be portrayed a little bit softer in this," she said.
"We know her as an angsty teen, and now she's a mother, and being a mother just opens your eyes into a whole new world, everything changes. Nothing matters more than your child … and I liked bringing that to Anna's character."
© Alamy Stock PhotoShe also said of getting to reunite with Jamie Lee on the screen: "When we started it felt like it was just yesterday, because we've known each other for so long and we've been friends off the screen, and I think that's the beauty of being able to make Freakier Friday, is that you don't get to often work with people that you genuinely love and are your friends, so it didn't feel as much like work as it normally would."
Though fans still have to wait until August 6 for the movie to release in theaters, our resident TV and movie expert Abby Allen shared with us: "Freaky Friday has always been a nostalgic favorite of mine, so when I heard the iconic franchise was returning, I couldn't help but start counting down the days. Returning to Tess and Anna's world 22 years later feels like reuniting with old friends — and I'm so excited to see how their lives (and body-swapping chaos) evolves."
