Here's Why Rachel McAdams Wasn't In That Mean Girls Reunion Commercial

Now that she’s graduated, Rachel McAdams isn’t returning to North Shore High any time soon.

One of McAdams’ early iconic roles was as the popular and bitchy high school student Regina George in Mean Girls, but while the Mean Girls movie is having a resurgence, McAdams isn’t taking part.

In January, a new version of Mean Girls that’s a mix of the original movie with the Broadway musical will be in theaters. It stars a new cast with Reneé Rapp as Regina George, Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, Auli’i Cravalho as Janis, Jaquel Spivey as Damien, and more.

While some of the original movie’s stars return, like Tina Fey (who also wrote the films) and Tim Meadows, there won’t be a cameo from the original Queen Bee herself.

“Tina and I sort of dabbled with a few ideas, but it was tough to make it all work in the end,” McAdams told Variety. “I was really down for whatever she wanted to do. I think the direction it went in will be fantastic and I cannot wait to see it.”

McAdams also missed the other recent Mean Girls reunion – a Black Friday commercial for Walmart that starred Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Daniel Franzese, and Rajiv Surendra. The commercial, which acted as a sort-of-sequel to the movie, saw Cady Heron working as the guidance counselor at the school while Gretchen is the new “cool mom” with her daughter as the leader of the new Plastics.

When Variety asked about that reunion, McAdams had a simple answer for not appearing. “I don’t know; I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest. A movie sounded awesome, but I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag.”

However, there’s also another piece of the puzzle – McAdams didn’t know the commercial would be a full-on reunion.

“Also… I didn’t know that everyone was doing it,” she said about the commercial. “I would, of course, always love to be part of a Mean Girls reunion and hang with my plastics. But yeah, I found that out later.”