I’ve been obsessed with Busy Philipps ever since a few minutes leafing through her memoir at an airport bookstore turned into me hunched over on my Spirit flight, devouring every single word. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that the actor and author would play queen bee Regina George’s mom in the upcoming movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls.
Sex Lives of College Girls star and singer Reneé Rapp has already been cast in the film after perfecting the role of Regina on Broadway, and frankly, Philipps as Rapp’s mom—who, as we know from the original 2004 film, is “not like a regular mom,” but “a cool mom”—is some of the best casting I could have possibly envisioned. Yes, they’re both blonde, but they’re also both in possession of razor-sharp comedic timing (and, for that matter, impressive singing voices, as Philipps proved at a 2015 theater benefit). One fun fact I gleaned from the Busy Philipps memoir is that she actually auditioned for the role of Terri Schuester on Glee a week after giving birth to her first child, writing of the experience: “I had to wear my postnatal diaper to the audition. I left Birdie for an hour to go sing ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ for Ryan Murphy. I didn’t get the part, obviously.”
While it’s kind of fun to imagine an alt version of Glee starring Philipps, I, for one, am perfectly content with her making her musical debut in the Mean Girls movie musical, which will also star Angourie Rice, Jaquel Spivey, and Auli'i Cravalho (and Tina Fey and Tim Meadows, who will reprise their original roles). No release date has been made public yet, but the film will eventually be available on Paramount+, which...probably means I should get Paramount+.