Tina Fey Criticized Millennials Who Think They "Own" Mean Girls
"They were like, 'You can't! We own this!' And I was like, 'Well, no. It's my thing.'"
Bringing Mean Girls to a new generation was a gigantic feat for creator and star Tina Fey. And one of the biggest challenges was convincing fans of the beloved 2004 comedy to go along for the ride. In recent interviews about the process of rolling out the reimagined 2024 Mean Girls, Fey confessed she got annoyed by millennial fans who think they “own” the movie.
Fey’s new film isn’t exactly a remake of her first one, although it does have almost exactly the same plot and tons of references to 2004’s hit comedy. It also features original songs from Fey’s Mean Girls musical, which had its Broadway debut in 2018 — but it’s not a direct adaptation of that either. When the movie was first announced, this mish-mash of remake/adaptation/sequel caused a lot of confusion. And one generation of fans was particularly upset.
Some millennials felt Mean Girls was simply too integral to their generation specifically to be remade. And yes, Fey could feel that backlash.
“Millennials especially, they feel real ownership of the movie,” Fey said in a Jan. 14 Today interview. “They were sort of like, ‘You can't! We own this!’ And I was sort of like, ‘Well, no. It's my thing.’ But they were like, ‘No, it’s our thing.’ I was like, ‘OK, fair enough. We’ll share it.’”
One piece of marketing particularly got under millennials’ skin. The first trailer for 2024’s Mean Girls opened with a generational jab: “This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls.”
Fey argued that the outraged response to that line exposed some “millennial narcissism” among viewers.
“The millennials were so butthurt,” Fey said in a Jan. 16 USA Today interview. “It was like, yes, you guys are getting old! It did expose a little millennial narcissism: When you went, there were other people in the theater too! And some of them may have been older than you! It was so centering themselves in the story.”
The Mean Girls creator went on to share the advice her 18-year-old daughter Alice gave her about dealing with the generational discourse. “My older daughter was like, ‘Yeah, no. Don't let those millennials overthink it!’”
