Amanda Seyfried reveals Blake Lively almost played Karen in Mean Girls

In a Feb. 22 interview, Amanda Seyfried revealed that Gossip Girl alum Blake Lively auditioned for her breakthrough role of Karen Smith in the 2004 comedy film Mean Girls, while she initially auditioned for the part of Regina George, which ultimately went to Rachel McAdams.

"I'd flown out to L.A. for the first time with my mother. It was very exciting," Seyfried told Vanity Fair. "I met Lacey Chabert for the first time and Lindsay Lohan was in the room and Blake Lively was playing Karen, and then I was Regina. I flew home and they were like...'We think you're more correct for Karen.' So I was like, 'Oh god, OK, sure.'"

Mean Girls casting director Marci Liroff previously revealed that Lively was a top pick for the movie role that Seyfried ultimately got. "We wanted Blake Lively, who hadn't done The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants yet, for Karen," she told Cosmopolitan UK in 2021. "She came down to the final tests but, at some point, some of the filmmakers said to keep looking."

Ultimately, it was film producer Lorne Michaels, best known as the creator of Saturday Night Live, who paved the way for Seyfried to be cast as Karen. "Amanda Seyfried had read for Regina and we really liked her," Liroff said, "but then Lorne suggested, 'Why don't we make her Karen?'"