Regina George, the reigning queen bee of the high school clique the Plastics in Tina Fey’s hit comedy “Mean Girls,” has always been nasty, narcissistic, and, from the 2004 movie to the 2018 Broadway musical adaptation, very much white and blonde.
But in yet another little landmark for colorblind casting, for the first time all three of the Plastics in “Mean Girls” are played by women of color in the national touring company. Nadina Hassan, whose father is Egyptian and mother is Colombian, plays Regina, and she is joined by Morgan Ashley Bryant as Karen and Jasmine Rogers as Gretchen.
Credit: Jenny Anderson
Credit: Jenny Anderson
“I’m so grateful to the ‘Mean Girls’ team for taking a chance on someone like me who doesn’t necessarily meet the older beauty norms,” Hassan said in a recent telephone interview. “It’s just a huge reveal when the Plastics come on stage for the first time. It’s like a big, big statement coming on stage.”
The musical, which opens at the Fox July 19 as part of the Broadway in Atlanta series, also stars English Bernhardt as Cady, Eric Huffman as Damian and Lindsay Heather Pearce as Janis Sarkisian.
Fey’s enduring franchise started with the 2004 comedy movie that starred Lindsay Lohan as a naïve transfer student to an Illinois high school that is dominated by a trio of apex predator teenaged girls who have established themselves as arbiters of all things cool and uncool.
Regina, their leader, played by Rachel MacAdams in the film, became a pop culture icon, leading to webpages like “15 Lines From Regina George That Prove She’s Pure Evil” and “80+ Fetch ‘Mean Girls’ Quotes To Unleash Your Inner Regina George.” One of her many: “Then it’s settled. So you can go shave your back now.”
(Fey’s cutting comedy was inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s more serious best-seller “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World.”)
Credit: Jenny Anderson
Credit: Jenny Anderson
Rather than pumping out a sequel, Fey boldly adapted her movie into a Broadway musical that debuted in 2018, with music by her husband Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Nell Benjamin. The musical was nominated for 12 Tony Awards, but after it closed in March 2020 due to COVID-19, it did not reopen when the rest of Broadway did.
At the same time “Mean Girls” was shuttering, Hassan was told by her college, Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, not to come back to campus from her senior year spring break as the country went into COVID-19 lockdown. She received her degree in musical theater in spring 2020, and her family held her graduation ceremony in their driveway in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was not a good time to be a young person embarking on a career in live theater.
When the national company ramped back up, Hassan auditioned for the role of Regina.
“I was a big Tina Fey fan, so I’ve absorbed all of her content forever since I was a kid,” she said. “’Saturday Night Live,’ ‘30 Rock,’ and obviously ‘Mean Girls.’
“I was maybe 10 or 11 when the movie came out, and this was back when Netflix delivered movies [on DVD] to your house, before streaming. I begged my mom to let us get it delivered on Netflix and we watched it together. I just remember how fabulous and amazing all these girls were in this movie. I thought they were so cool.”
At the time, she did not really notice how very white the main characters are. “It’s not really something that registered until I was older, like high school or college. We have come such a long way since then,” she said.
“It’s such an honor to be able to play this role for young girls of color who may be searching and maybe don’t know they can play a very strong female lead and be strong themselves.”
Hassan said she gets lots of feedback from girls of color. “You never know who’s in the audience and it’s such a dream to be able to instill some sort of confidence in people. Every message I get, every piece of fan mail just warms my heart when they say it means so much to them to see me up on the stage. It’s just so impactful for them. It’s what fuels each show.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“Mean Girls”
July 19-24. $36-$109. Fox Theatre. 660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 855-285-8499, foxtheatre.org.
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