Jonathan Bennett is ready to make his comeback as the high school heartthrob Aaron Samuels. In a clip shared to Entertainment Weekly rom the I’ve Never Said This Before podcast, Bennett confirmed the cast has been buzzing about a potential sequel.
“On October 3rd and stuff, our phones light up,” he told host Tommy DiDario.
“I don’t think there’s been an actual conversation between us that I can remember,” he said about him and costar Lindsay Lohan. “But, like, in the group chat, do we want to do it? Yes. It’s just, we did that movie 22 years ago, so it’s like… everyone grows up. We were kids shooting this movie. And then you grow up and get your lives… So it’s like, we would love to come back and bring the band back together. It’s just way above my pay grade. That’s a Tina Fey question.”
Later in the clip, the pair dive into what a sequel could look like, especially for Bennett’s character Aaron, who goes from dating queen bee Regina George to falling for new girl Cady Heron.
“Do you think Aaron would be gay or straight in this iteration?” DiDario asked.
“That’s a great question,” Bennett started. “First of all, how weird is this. Almost all the guys from Mean Girls are gay.” This is true! Since the film premiered in 2004, Bennett, Daniel Franzese (Damian Leigh), and Rajv Surendra (Kevin Gnapoor) have all come out as queer.
“What came first, the gay or the Mean Girls?” the actor joked.
But in all seriousness, Bennett doesn’t picture Aaron coming out in a sequel, even if that’s exactly what he did in real life.
“IÂ think Aaron would be straight because I wouldn’t want to change the narrative of Aaron Samuels because Jonathan Bennett is gay. You would keep the narrative of Aaron Samuels because that’s the story,” he answered.
Sometimes art doesn’t imitate life, it just stays fiction. Similarly, Raven-Symoné, who played Raven Baxter in That’s So Raven and later reprised the role in Raven’s Home, said her character shouldn’t be queer in the reboot.
“The reason I said ‘no’ wasn’t because I wasn’t proud of who I was, or I didn’t want to represent the LGBTQ+ community in any way,” Raven told the Pride Podcast. “It was because Raven Baxter is Raven Baxter. There was no reason for me to change the human that she was in order to fit the actress that played her.”
Mean Girls 2 Plot Line Revealed?
Even though Bennett said he’s leaving the sequel up to Fey, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a few ideas for what the plot could be.
“Why don’t we just do the movie everyone wants. We all come back, we’re all teachers. I’m a teacher at the school, the girls are grown up, have their own kids, and now their daughters are coming to school,” Bennett pitches. Of course, there would be a focus on the parents, as those are the original characters fans of the film would be most excited to see. “It’s just in your face, like, that’s the storyline. It’s not rocket science.”
“You could have a storyline for all the parents who are the millennials that are current fans of the movie, grew up with it; so they’re going to be attached to, like Lacey, Amanda, me. And then you have the kids who are the new batch for their kids to be watching, so they can identify with those kids,” he concludes. The framework is all there.
We’ve seen a wave of sequels in recent years, and with Lohan returning for the Freakier Friday movie earlier this year, the timing feels just right.
“Tina, I’m not getting any younger,” Bennett joked.
