Nisha Ganatra has something on her phone you need to see. It's a radiant April afternoon in Los Angeles, and the film director eagerly holds her
Nisha Ganatra has something on her phone you need to see.
It’s a radiant April afternoon in Los Angeles, and the film director eagerly holds her phone to show off a black-and-white snapshot. It’s a candid behind-the-scenes vignette of Lindsay Lohan, nestled in a comfortable slump on Jamie Lee Curtis’ lap. The Oscar-winning Halloween franchise vet gently cradles her onscreen daughter between takes on set of Disney’s Freakier Friday, the highly anticipated sequel to body-swapping family comedy Freaky Friday.
“It looked like mother and daughter, really holding each other,” Ganatra recalls of capturing the shot, still fresh in her mind (and heart) over a year after filming. “That’s something you can’t bring as a director. They have a love and a trust. They bring a joyfulness out in each other, and that’s gold.”
Curtis knows what you’re thinking: This is just “that weird thing when you’re doing movie promotion” where the stars bogus their fondness for each other. Not the case, she insists, speaking to Entertainment Weekly while sitting next to Lohan in a dressing room on set for a Freakier marketing shoot. Their natural chemistry is as evident during the afternoon conversation as it is on screen in their long-awaited sequel, the product of 22 years of friendship.
“I’ve known Lindsay since she was 15,” Curtis explains of meeting Lohan while filming the 2003 film, which became a teen comedy hit to the tune of $110 million at the domestic box office. “That’s just an extraordinary thing, to watch someone walk through life.”
The actresses’ trajectories may have deviated slightly since their initial collaboration, but Lohan confirms she and Curtis remained an crucial part of each other’s lives over the decades — and Freakier Friday’s narrative celebrates that power of ties that endure and prevail through sometimes sorcerous hurdles.
Written by Dollface creator and Sweethearts writer/director Jordan Weiss, Freakier Friday (in theaters Aug. 28) finds Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) in the days leading up to the latter’s wedding to British restaurateur Eric (Manny Jacinto). Tess, now a successful podcaster and author, is still a helicopter parent, though her propellers now pull double duty as a mom and a doting grandma to Anna’s 15-year-old daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). A wacky psychic (Vanessa Bayer) senses familial disarray, and switches the duo’s minds with that of Harper and Anna’s soon-to-be stepchild, Lily (Sophia Hammons).
The blended tribe’s soul-switching trials are all by design, of course. As in the 2003 film, the events are purposefully engineered by occult entities to test the bonds of blood. But this time, the ties that bind chosen family are challenged, too — all while the teens at the center resist each other, and their fate as stepsisters-to-be.
Sophia Hammons as Lily and Jamie Lee Curtis as Tess in ‘Freakier Friday’.
Andrew Eccles/Disney
Like their characters, Curtis and Lohan — who also produce their modern film — have grown personally and professionally since last sharing the screen.
Lohan, 38, is a modern mom heated off a Hollywood comeback thanks to a three-picture Netflix deal, and she’ll re-team with Disney on Hulu’s just-announced series adaptation of suspense-thriller novel Count My Lies.
Curtis, 66, now has an Academy Award for her work in 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. But, unlike Harper and Lily, they couldn’t be happier to meet each other back in this moment — one they say the universe willed into existence (with a little earthly support from Curtis).
“In every country I went to [promote Halloween Ends], the only consistent question I got was ‘When are you making another Freaky Friday?’ I called you on the road at one point and said, ‘This is all people are asking,'” Curtis says, turning toward Lohan. “Clearly, there was an appetite for this.”
Enough so that Curtis launched a personal mission, taking the idea to those who mattered most: Disney boss Bob Iger and Lohan, whom she phoned in overdue 2022 with a pitch while the Mean Girls star filmed her 2024 rom-com Irish Wish in Europe.
“When Jamie called me in Ireland, I was like, ‘Yes, I’m in, let’s do it.’ It’s not very often that you get to work with someone who’s been such a big part of your life on a personal level,” Lohan recalls, smiling as she stares back at the friend who made it happen. “That was exciting for me, to come back and do a big-screen film with a woman that I admire, that’s part of my life off screen. To have that chance again, it doesn’t happen much. I felt lucky to be able to do it.”
Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis reunite for EW’s ‘Freakier Friday’ cover.
Alexi Lubomirski
Raising the ‘Freaky’ flag higher
While fate and fandom conspired to reunite Curtis and Lohan, making a sequel to one of the millennial generation’s most cherished comedies was a monumental task that required more than just the stars’ desire to work together again. Their mystical movie star chemistry isn’t the only thing fueling the film’s appeal. Its script has a surprising amount of heart, progressing the stories of these beloved characters rather than simply retreading elderly ground for those who grew up with the prior installment (and might now be watching with their own children).
“It’s the reason you go to the movies — it’s the reason you go to a Disney movie,” Curtis says of the film’s buoyant climax, which, without spoiling too much, repositions Lohan on a musical stage in soaring fashion. “To have a moment where all of a sudden you’re going to reach over and hold the hand of the person sitting next to you, if it’s your mom, grandma, friend…. You’re going to be moved by it.”
Yes, beloved characters return (Chad Michael Murray’s hunky Jake, Mark Harmon’s loving stepdad Ryan, and even Stephen Tobolowsky’s Mr. Bates), obvious references are made (Curtis outdoes her “I’m like the Crypt Keeper” joke from the first film by a mile), and the themes are mostly the same.
One thing you won’t see, however, is a cameo from Jodie Foster, who starred in the first adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ Freaky Friday novel in 1976. (“We begged her. She’s not going to do it,” says Ganatra. EW has reached out to a representative for Foster for comment.)
And maybe that’s for the best, because one of Freakier Friday’s strengths — and what sets it apart from many family-oriented sequels — is that, while it’s a nostalgic jaunt into the past, it never hits those beats without earning them.
“Every moment is accounted for,” Murray feels. “When you get to walk on a set and it just feels like it’s home, why would you not want to be there? It felt like an all-encompassing, loving, great dynamic, like no time had passed. Yet, we had entire lives in between. It’s a very full film.”
Or, as Lohan puts it, Freakier Friday is a “timeless story of dynamics within a family,” exemplified in the film’s opening sequence. The scene trains on Anna, a single mom dreaming of her past life as a rock star after giving up her successful stint as Pink Slip’s guitarist and vocalist for a day job at a record label so she could raise Harper. (Though her former bandmates, played by returning stars Christina Vidal and Haley Hudson, are still a part of her life.) Anna now fusses over her daughter’s early morning grumbles, rushes to get her out the door, and even shouts, “Make good choices!” at the bleary teen from the car as she drops her off at school, just as Tess did with her.
Things have changed quite a bit for Tess and Anna, and it’s all motivated by the actresses’ personal evolution. Particularly, Lohan feels a stronger connection to the story after she and her husband, Bader Shammas, welcomed a son, Luai, in July 2023.
“The closeness that you have with your child, and that bond — how irreplaceable that is, and wanting to do the right thing for your child — is always the most important thing in the world, and nothing can stand in the way of that,” Lohan says of the perspective she has now but couldn’t bring to filming Freaky Friday at age 16. “I also didn’t have the calmness that a mother needs to have when a child is losing it. Now, I get to play with that. I get to have those moments that Tess used to have with Anna.”
Mother of the Lohannaisance
During their interview, it’s basic to see Lohan and Curtis’ appreciation for each other. Curtis often breaks her gaze to cast gentle glances toward Lohan when she speaks, and her face lights up when she hears Lohan assert her priorities as a modern mom.
“Everything I do is [about] what’s going to work for my family,” Lohan explains of choosing projects at this stage of her career. “If something works around that, it’s meant to happen. If it doesn’t work around that, it’s a no-go.”
It’s a marked difference from the hectic early 2000s Lohan spent on seemingly every movie poster and tabloid cover. Until her Netflix deal that produced 2022’s Falling for Christmas, Irish Wish, and Our Little Secret (also 2024), Lohan hadn’t led a feature distributed by a major Hollywood studio since 2007’s I Know Who Killed Me. And the modern mom knew she was ready for more.
“It’s manifestation,” she says of Freakier Friday, “because I had this thing in my head during COVID, I was like, ‘I want to work with Netflix and do a couple movies, but I want to work with Disney again, too.’ It came to fruition because I believed it. Those things are meant to happen. I love my life, and I’m grateful for these moments I have.”
Manny Jacinto as Eric and Lindsay Lohan as Anna in ‘Freakier Friday’.
Andrew Eccles/Disney
Curtis says watching Lohan “become a mother and a woman has been a great privilege,” and even relates her own experience filming Freaky Friday to that of her onscreen daughter’s during production of the sequel.
“I had a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old at home, with three days of prep before the original Freaky Friday,” Curtis reflects. “If it filmed outside California, I wouldn’t have been in the movie. If it shot in Vancouver, I wouldn’t have done it because I had kids. Balancing motherhood is a big part of our lives, but it’s also a big part of the movie. It’s the story of the movie.”
That narrative expands in the sequel thanks to modern cast and crew, whom Lohan and Curtis quickly adopted into their expanding Freaky family.
Ganatra, who helmed Tracee Ellis Ross and Dakota Johnson’s 2020 comedy The High Note and Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson’s 2019 Sundance hit Late Night, joined the project in early 2024 after a series of meetings with Disney and producers. The filmmaker found the idea of directing Freakier Friday “intimidating,” but was confident she could “lean into the emotional arc of it and push [the studio] to make it more moving.” She was also eager to buck the “trend of the anti-hero” in Hollywood films made by men, which she says “really bums me out” as an audience member.
Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis for EW’s ‘Freakier Friday’ cover shoot.
Alexi Lubomirski
“As a gay person, I know a lot about chosen family. The idea struck me that there’s the family you think you are, and the family you could be. If you’re afraid to let people in and grow, you’re limiting yourself,” she adds of the story, which showcases a state-of-the-art, blended family navigating the universally relatable “messy journey” of parenthood.
Things weren’t always so solemn on set, though. This is a Disney sequel, after all, and Ganatra’s goal was a product that “lifts you up” in the end — and, for her, one that ensures audiences aren’t “forgetting the movie by the time they get to their car.’
Table manners
In a mid-film plot by Harper-as-Anna (remember: daughter-as-mom) to meddle in her mother’s affairs, she puts her feelings aside and partners with Lily-as-Tess (her soon-to-be-stepdaughter-as-grandma… phew). Together, the frenemies hatch a scheme that, for one reason or another, requires “Anna” to reintroduce herself to her dreamy, motorcycle-riding, ex-high school crush, Jake, who now owns a record store.
In this sequence of comical seduction, Lohan feels free on screen in ways we haven’t seen in years, perhaps because of the comfortable, familial vibe of the collaborators around her. Soundtracked by Britney Spears (another nod to the prior film), an electric energy washes over her as the star climbs atop a table and writhes around in front of Murray. But, as Curtis recalls, all that was written on the page was “Anna flips her hair” for Jake.
Lindsay Lohan attempts to seduce Chad Michael Murray’s Jake in ‘Freakier Friday’.
Glen Wilson/Disney
“None of that was there,” Lohan confirms. “I almost fell off a few times. I think Chad’s reactions were real.”
Murray agrees: “I loved watching Lindsay own it. It was like, Oh, there she is.”
Ganatra thinks the performance will reposition Lohan in the eyes of the industry amid the ongoing Lohannaisance.
“I feel like people are going to see the Lindsay that has that twinkle in her eye, is a little mischievous, has a big f—ing heart, and makes you smile while watching her,” she says. “It’s not just the nostalgia of, ‘It’s Anna again!’ It’s Lindsay doing what we love watching Lindsay do.”
‘Freakies’ in the family
Lohan also found fans in the film’s next-gen stars, with 16-year-old Butters endearingly referring to her and Curtis as Friday’s “Founding Mothers.”
“As humans, they’re so nurturing,” adds Hammons, 18, while seated next to Butters on a break from the marketing shoot with Curtis and Lohan. “Putting that kind of person in a position to welcome two new actors into this story worked out great. I got a parental vibe from them. It felt like they always had our backs, always looking out for us.”
Ganatra says she aimed to amplify that intimacy with “some weird rehearsal stuff” during preparation, putting her stars through awkward encounters that honed their attention on the physical notes they’d need to hit to make those role reversals feel natural.
“The whole movie falls apart if you don’t believe” it’s real, Ganatra says.
So, the four actresses rehearsed in a dance studio for weeks, practicing each other’s mannerisms; studying vocal inflections; and engaging in what can be described as emotional transference, spiritual osmosis, or a combination of the two. They held hands, stared into each other’s eyes for great lengths, and exchanged secret notes written in character.
“They’d give us scenarios to play out, like your first mother-daughter bonding moment: ‘You’re going to come out, and Lindsay will tuck you in with a blanket.’ It built memories to use as a foundation for later,” Butters shares.
Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons as Harper and Lily in ‘Freakier Friday’.
Andrew Eccles/Disney
“One time, I got a migraine on set. There’s not much you can do if it’s not going away with medicine. Lindsay gave me sunglasses to wear during her coverage. I sat slouched in a corner, and she’d squeeze my neck, fully unprompted,” she continues. “Mother, literally.”
And “Jamie really did act like Lindsay’s mom on set,” Hammons recalls. “Then, they started acting like that toward us. We’re always getting kisses on the forehead or cheek. We slowly became part of that circle, too.”
Acceptance of their modern brood means that, like most families, the quartet are now deeply embedded in an ongoing group text titled “Freakies,” where Butters and Hammons say their onscreen maternal figures share bits of wisdom, updates on the film’s progress, and messages of encouragement, while also organizing meetups, dinners, and more.
Hammons emphasizes that she and Butters “literally are best friends” in real life because of the movie, while Butters — who says she and Hammons are building “our own 20-year [friendship]” — makes a sweet promise to her bestie beside her: “Sorry, but you’re stuck with me!”
Laughing, Hammons compares the group’s relationship to an imagined monument.
“Freaky Friday Mountain,” she calls it. “But, instead of Mt. Rushmore, it’s Lindsay and Jamie’s faces chiseled into it, and we’ll be like little stones on that mountain.”
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan for EW’s ‘Freakier Friday’ cover shoot.
Alexi Lubomirski
Picture-perfect Hollywood ending
Back in their dressing room, Curtis and Lohan are anything but etched in stone, marveling at how they both have evolved since their 2003 hit. The former’s voice softens as she recalls discovering the hows and the whys surrounding the latter’s constant move to Dubai in 2014.
“She was looking to find [a calm] place and quiet. That wasn’t going to be in New York or L.A., because they’re filled with aggro people. It impressed me so much,” says Curtis.
“I grew up so much in the public eye that I never really had the space to take time for me and just live a normal life,” Lohan explains. “I found it there.”
A part of it might exist right here with Curtis, too.
“I understood the depth of the woman you’ve become. I give you great respect for that,” Curtis says, her eyes still on Lohan. “I couldn’t freaking do that at your age. I wouldn’t have known how to do that. That speaks volumes to the woman she’s become, the type of human she is, the type of mother, wife, friend.”
She hugs Lohan, whose head finds its rightful place in the cradle of Curtis’ neck.
Then, Lohan smiles, unknowingly recreating a version of that photo Ganatra holds so dear as a reminder of the love that went into their Freakier adventure.
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Directed by Kristen Harding + Alison Wild
Photography by Alexi Lubomirski
Motion – DP: Ava Rikki; 1st AC: Philip Hoang; Techno Crane: Eli Franks; Techno Crane Tech: Steven Neel; Gaffer: Kay Zhou; Best Electric: Colin Silver; Key Grip: Corey Milikin; Best Grip: Derick Holub; Grip: David Gonzalez
Production Design – Production Designer: Abraham Latham; Assistants: Josiah Crawford, Niles Wilbur, Eric Contreras
Photo – Assistants: Benjamin Tietge, Paolo Alfante, Jeremy Sinclair, Dan Patrick; Digital Tech: Aron Norman
Post-Production – Color Correction: Bryan Smaller; VFX: Company 3; Design: Alex Sandoval; Song: “Take Me Away” performed by Pink Slip from Disney’s Freakier Friday
Video Interview – Producer: Salem Daniel; Interviewer: Gerrad Hall; DP: Philips Shum; Camera Op: Jordan McNeile; Gaffer: Nate Gold; Audio: Michael Holcomb
Lindsay Lohan – Styling: Rob & Mariel/The Wall Group; Hair: Danielle Priano; Makeup: Ash K Holm; Manicure: Eri Ishizu
Jamie Lee Curtis – Styling: Jane Ross; Hair: Sean James; Makeup: Erin Ayanian
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