Freakier Friday: Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis on the moments they knew the sequel was going to work

Twenty-two years is a long time. In fact, it’s generation-spanning.

That’s the time since Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis first body swapped in Freaky Friday, the 2003 remake of the 1976 family comedy that asked its characters to literally walk in each other’s shoes.

In that version, budding teen musician Anna Coleman and her held-in and exasperated therapist mother Tess wake up in each other’s bodies. It’s chaos, confusion and improv as they try to live out the day by pretending to be the other.

The wacky concept is comedic goldmine, but it’s also an empathy-driven idea, as mother and daughter come to understand each other’s challenges, and that beneath their fighting is unconditional love.

A generation later, Freakier Friday is out this week, with Lohan and Curtis reprising their roles. This time, Anna is the one getting married, to Eric (Manny Jacinto), a dishy restauranteur.

But tensions are high with Anna’s daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), and Eric’s kid, Lily (Sophia Hammons), sworn enemies. Another dose of mystic understanding is in order and all four ladies wake up after an overnight switcheroo – between Anna and Harper, and Tess and Lily.

The scene is bouncing with a cacophonous panic and heightened physical comedy. It’s also the moment Curtis knew the sequel was going to be fine.

“Any body swap comedy either hits or misses on the swap,” Curtis told The Nightly. “If the swap doesn’t work, the movie doesn’t work.

“For me, day three of filming, the four of us waking up in each other’s bodies and then looking in the mirror and having to live in each other’s bodies really allowed me, at that moment, to go, ‘OK, we’re great because the girls were great’.

“The premise worked, the jokes were funny. We were laughing so hard that day. The minute we started laughing, the crew started laughing. The minute they started laughing, the studio was laughing. Everybody relaxed. All of a sudden, Freakier Friday was working because we had hit that moment of truth and nailed it.”

Picking up a character again after more than two decades is always daunting. The challenge is even bigger when you’re doing that and playing someone else as well.

“Because the switch happened so early, we had to figure out who the (new) girls were because they didn’t really have time to get to show us who they were,” Lohan said. “We had to evolve our (original) characters, and then create two new ones.”

Freakier Friday had a new director in Nisha Ganatra and a different screenwriter in Jordan Weiss, but Curtis emphasised that three producers – Kristin Burr, Andrew Gunn and Ann Marie Sanderlin – were on both projects, which maintained a sense of continuity.

Lohan added that she and Curtis both had a big hand in “maintaining the parts of our characters that we wanted to keep in there”.

Anna is now a single mother in her late 30s, and working as a music manager after she gave up performing with Pink Slip, the band she formed in her teens with Maddie (Christina Vidal) and Peg (Haley Hudson).

Her two friends are both in the film, and don’t be surprised if Anna picks up that guitar again. For Lohan, playing with Pink Slip was the first time she knew she had stepped back into a world she knew and loved.

“And in all my scenes where I get to be Anna with Tess, those are the scenes that felt the most comfortable, and those are the most exciting to do because I got to be Anna again, and with her mum,” she said.

Getting to be Anna again is a full circle moment for Lohan.

Freaky Friday had been only her second film and it was the beginning of a supercharged handful of years in which she became a massive name for her innate talent and screen presence, but also attracted attention for “child star gone wild”.

She had few prominent roles after 2007 and, still in her early 20s, withdrew from public view, popping up only as herself in interviews or the occasional cameo. By the late 2010s, Lohan was venturing out again, including a stint as a judge on The Masked Singer Australia.

But it wasn’t until 2022 when she came back in a lead role in the Netflix Christmas movie Falling for Christmas, was Lohan signalling her intentions. Two more Netflix movies followed – both leads – as did a cameo in the Mean Girls movie adaptation of the Broadway musical (which was based on the 2005 film).

While those Netflix movies varied from mediocre to terrible, they were just the entrees, and Freakier Friday is the main course.

Working with a comedic director experienced in making films for cinemas in Ganatra (Late Night, The High Note), and paired again with Curtis, that former spark Lohan had as a child actor was on show.

Curtis recalled that when Lohan made Freaky Friday as a 15-year-old, Lohan had to juggle the demands of school and filming, and was impressed at how easily she could jump out of one into the other.

Now, 22 years later, it’s something else that kept Lohan in balance.

“When I was younger, from my perspective, I had more time to hang around on set,” Lohan said. “Now that I’m a mum, I wanted to get home as fast as I could just to be with my son.”

Freakier Friday is in cinemas on August 7