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Tina Fey reflects on 'Mean Girls' 15 years later

By Annie Martin

May 28 (UPI) -- Tina Fey is reflecting on Mean Girls 15 years after the movie's release.

The 49-year-old actress discussed the 2004 film and its lasting relevance in an interview with Savannah Guthrie during Tuesday's episode of Today.

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Fey adapted Mean Girls from the Rosalind Wiseman book Queen Bees and Wannabes -- her first and only screenplay thus far.

"I wrote it when I was a writer at SNL," she told Guthrie. "I saw this article in The New York Times about a woman named Ros Wiseman who had written this book ... I was like, 'I want to make a movie of that.' And they let me. Now it's 15 years later."

Fey penned the screenplay herself, without Paramount Pictures bringing in other writers to polish the project.

"That was really rare, especially at that time. This awesome woman named Sherry Lansing, who ran Paramount Pictures at the time, she never took it away from me," the star said.

"I think that's part of why the movie kind of worked for people, is that it had one writer's voice," she said. "It's a real good thing that -- let writers do their thing."

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Fey said the "mean girls" culture in the movie still exists in real life.

"The thing of relational aggression, the way people kind of shade each other -- I feel like women are doing better, but now I feel like the behavior has kind of spread to everyone," the actress said.

"The idea of calling someone stupid won't make you any smarter? We need to tell it to the president and the speaker of the House," she added.

Mean Girls was directed by Mark Waters and starred Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried and Lizzy Caplan. Fey has since adapted the film as a Broadway musical, whose cast performed at the 2018 Tony Awards.

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