Harry Styles was on the director’s wish list for this iconic Mean Girls role
Harry Styles was nearly cast in an iconic Mean Girls role (Dave J Hogan / Getty)
The new Mean Girls movie is just days away from hitting theatres in the UK, and it’s giving the iconic 2004 comedy a Gen Z twist.
Aside from the new movie theatre flick being a musical — and incorporating iPhones and social media à la 2024 — a brand new cast is gracing the silver screen to embody our favourite characters.
The movie tells the story of Cady Heron (played by Angourie Rice) as she navigates her first time in a US high school with all its social cliques, and befriends the coolest girl in school, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), as well as her two sidekicks Karen Shetty (Avantika Vandanapu) and Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood).
But it turns out that audience-goers were robbed of Harry Styles in this year’s reboot, and he would have been playing an iconic role.
Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that they wanted to cast the singer-come-actor as none other than Glen Coco.
When asked about the moments they were going to keep from the original version of Mean Girls, Jayne explained that there were certain comedic moments in the first movie which aren’t acceptable today. Like Janis’ big secret, where she is now a “loud and proud” lesbian.
“But there are certain iconic lines where we would joke that there would be riots in the streets if it wasn’t in there,” Jayne continued. “Like ‘You go, Glen Coco!’ Give the people what they want. Give me what I want! But when we were like, ‘Who’s Glen Coco?’”
Perez then added: “Who can it be? I remember us going, ‘could we ask, like Harry Styles?,’” he said of the iconic movie moment, which would have seen the hunk — who is famous for his appearances in Don’t Worry Darling and Dunkirk — getting four candy canes during the scene which ultimately ended George’s friendship with Weiners.
“We were like, ‘Harry Styles could be Glen Coco!’, Jayne confirmed. But in the end, the pair decided to go in a different direction and actually cast all of us to play the part. The iconic line is delivered straight to the camera, “so, after 20 years, we can all feel like Glen Coco.”
Mean Girls hits theatres on 17 January in the UK.
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