While Regina George is usually the one having to ask, “Why are you so obsessed with me?”, the script was curiously flipped amidst the recent buzz about the new Mean Girls movie. All of a sudden, not only had I morphed into an even more frustrated version of Regina George — if we’re saying that’s humanly possible — but the subject of this question was no longer Janis Ian. My question was addressed to, and only to: “The Internet.”
With a franchise as beloved as Mean Girls, it would have been naive to assume there would be no discourse comparing the original cast to the 2024 cast. But never in my wildest pop culture dreams could I have predicted just how obsessed the internet would be with comparing Rachel McAdams, who played Regina George in the 2004 movie, and Renée Rapp, who played Regina on Broadway and in the 2024 movie.
In the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, my TikTok page was flooded with fan edits of our two leading ladies, claiming one or the other to be, “The Real Regina George.” In addition to the fan edits, journalists were also quite concerned with getting to the bottom of Rachel and Renée’s sentiments towards each other, which in my opinion, started to come off as a classic case of attempting to stir up nonexistent drama.
So, instead of bringing the Regina vs. Regina nonsense to our TV screens, Saturday Night Live did just the opposite. On January 20th, Jacob Elordi hosted SNL with musical guest Renée Rapp: a duo that left every single Gen Z viewer in a heap on the floor. While Jacob Elordi introduced Renée Rapp’s first performance of the night himself, which is the standard protocol for SNL hosts, the second introduction caught us in jubilant surprise.
In an unexpected twist, Rachel McAdams appeared on the SNL stage in all her glory. As the live audience erupted into hysteria, those watching this historic moment go down on TV gazed wide-eyed at Rachel, who was just beaming at the camera while waiting for the applause to subside; she was truly as radiant and as warm as ever. I have watched this intro too many times than I care to admit, but Regina George introducing Regina George could never get old. In what simultaneously felt like a passing of the torch and a subtle condemnation of the media’s fruitless comparison, this creative decision reinstilled my faith in SNL’s writers. On that stage, Rachel and Renée’s mutual respect and affection for one another had never been clearer, which silently told off the masses who were hell bent on catching them in a post “Burn Book” reveal catfight at North Shore High School.
And right after viewers thought we couldn’t possibly handle another surprise appearance nor another Regina in just one night, there was yet another celebrity cameo from none other than Megan Thee Stallion. Making her grand reveal from behind a giant tiered cake in the middle of Renée’s performance, Megan stepped out onto the SNL stage dressed to the nines in pink while boasting fabulously blonde hair — an expertly styled homage to Wednesdays in Mean Girls. Megan performed her verse on “Not My Fault,” a song that she and Renée collaborated on for the new movie’s soundtrack.
In “Not My Fault”, Megan Thee Stallion’s most iconic line is undeniably, “It’s funny how the mean girl open all the doors / But I been told y’all, I’m the black Regina George.” And despite being an avid Megan stan for years, I was not aware that this lyric is not the first time, nor even the second, that Megan has made an allusion to Mean Girls in her work. In fact, she’s been the self-proclaimed “black Regina George” for years. In addition to other lyrical nods, like in her songs “Naturally” and “Outta Town Freestyle”, she has also captioned several of her Twitter posts about Regina. That being said, it has been quite a long time coming for Megan to claim her throne as “Thee Regina George,” but I would expect that the wait was well worth it. Her years of infectious Regina energy manifested into the collab to end all collabs.
So there you have it: three Reginas, one set, one Saturday night. Well aware of their target audience, Rachel, Renée, and Megan knew that a trio of such grandeur could not end the night without a rendition of the Spider Man finger pointing photo.
After this episode of Saturday Night Live, women everywhere, long scorned by the comedy industry, were able to take a deep breath. You can say what you want about the SNL writers, but this time they didn’t take the opportunity to use the low-hanging fruit, better known to us as misogyny disguised as comedy. They rejected the narrative that there could only be one “real” Regina George and ran with it, leaving viewers with an all around entertaining episode of television that appealed to every Mean Girls lover out there, no matter which Regina they hold true as their own. For the first time, I had a glimpse of hope that the age of pitting successful women against each other, even in comedy shows, is slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past.