Mean Girls: Jaquel Spivey Talks Meeting Daniel Franzese and the Importance of Representation

Mean Girls was released in theaters last month, and now the film is officially available digitally. The new movie is not quite a remake of the 2004 movie or the Broadway adaptation. Instead, writer Tina Fey has referred to the project as a hybrid. This makes sense considering Fey and Tim Meadows reprise their roles from the original film while the rest of the cast is a mixture of Mean Girls newcomers and folks who appeared in the Broadway musical. One such newcomer is Jaquel Spivey who plays Damian Hubbard in the film. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Spivey, and he talked about the importance of representation and meeting original Damian actor, Daniel Franzese. 

“So many, and that’s why I do it,” Spivey replied when asked if any young people have spoken to him about being inspired by the film’s representation. “It sounds cliche and I feel like a lot of people say that, even if it’s not true, but for me, I just remember being younger and looking around and being so jealous of friends because it’s like, ‘You have someone in media that you can relate to. You have someone that you can see and you can see yourself.’ I didn’t have anybody, so the closest I got was Damian, and also to have Damian be a Black man, I think there’s something so rich in that because most of the time when we see Black men, they’re a specific way in media, but especially as queer Black men.”

“So with this one, I was like, ‘I want him to be fem, I want him to be flamboyant, I want him to be all the things. I want him to be built like a football player and be everything but a football player,’” he continued. “And that to me was the biggest joy, and then of course, to have Janis, Auliʻi [Cravalho], to play off of and just to bring all that queer energy to life, I don’t know, it felt really special, and I hope that there were a lot of people who felt seen in places that they didn’t think they would in this movie.”

Jaquel Spivey On Meeting Daniel Franzese: 

“I think the words of wisdom that he gave me were, ‘I’m excited to see your Damian,’” Spivey shared when asked about his encounter with Franzese. “And I think as an actor, that’s the biggest gift you can receive because sometimes you wonder, ‘Is this person going to like me if I’m touching something that’s been theirs for so long?’ And I made it very clear, I am not Damian, I am not the new Damian. There’s no torch that needs to be passed. I play Damian in this film, but even for me, Damian is always going to be Daniel.” 

“So, to have him bring such warmth and kindness to me without even meeting me yet was a very, very big gift,” he continued. “And then meeting him in person, I forgot that it was like 1,000 cameras and all these people around me because I just had to tell him like, ‘Thank you, you were taking the job and you were performing a role, but I don’t think you understand how many people you have touched in doing that, especially people like me,’ so that was a joy.”

Mean Girls (2024) is now available digitally.