Source: Entertainment Weekly

Janis Ian almost looked very different in the original Mean Girls.

Lizzy Caplan, who played the lovable goth smartass in the 2004 comedy classic, said that she fought an uphill battle to appear in the film two decades ago. The Masters of Sex star said that the audition process for the Tina Fey–penned film was “very, very long” during an interview with Penn Badgley on Podcrushed.

“It was just the funniest script I had ever read,” Caplan said. “I wanted to be in it so bad. I fought so hard and then it worked out.”

In order to secure the role, however, Caplan first had to audition for a different character. “Everybody had to audition, I think, for one of the two main [roles]: Cady, the Lindsay Lohan part, or the Rachel McAdams part.” The actress said that the casting team then “sorted” the auditioners into different groups for callbacks.

“I went in and they were resistant to casting me,” Caplan said of behind-the-scenes figures, noting that another entertainer was floated to play Janis. “Somebody reminded me of this recently: the studio wanted Kelly Osbourne to play that role.”

Caplan also said that a Canadian hairstylist stepped in to help provide a sense of what the actress would look like as Janis. “We went to Hollywood Boulevard and put on dark wigs and just anything to send them screen grabs of me looking like a goth kid,” she said.

The actress was thrilled when she finally joined the film. “I don’t remember how long the process was, but I remember getting the phone call and where I was when I got the phone call that I got the part,” she said. “How many times has that really happened to you in your career: that you just want to celebrate and it’s nothing but exciting?”

Elsewhere in the interview, Caplan reflected on the formative social experiences from the production of the teen comedy. The whole thing was in Toronto for probably three months,” she said. “We lived in the hotel and it felt like a dorm, which, looking back, was a really important thing for me.”

Caplan said that the film “scratched that college experience itch” that she missed while pursuing her acting career. “All of my friends, I would go visit them in college and they were having these really exciting new experiences,” she said. “I was in Los Angeles, going to the supermarket at three in the morning, hoping that anything would happen to me, like I would meet anybody and anything would happen.”

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Caplan said that her time working on the movie was “so fun,” and that she was particularly friendly with Daniel Franzese (Damian Leigh) and Jonathan Bennett (Aaron Samuels). “We had the greatest time, just bombing around Toronto,” she said. “Just being in a movie felt like such a big deal to me at the time.”

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