Mean Girls Star Gives the Lowdown on How He Got The Best Gig Ever

It’s hard to believe ten years have passed since Mean Girls blessed pop culture with its presence. To celebrate the anniversary, Daniel Franzese (aka Damian) recently gave an interview on the making of the film.

This Cosmopolitan Q&A with Franzese about the movie and working with Lindsay Lohan is damn near perfect. All that’s missing is the part where he and I run off to a bar in San Diego and guzzle margarita shooters for the weekend. Franzese told Cosmopolitan how his audition for the role went (seems a bit painful):

I sat in the waiting room in character as Damian, commenting on anything and everything I could. Amanda Seyfried had come in for her test and she was wondering aloud, “Should I wear this beige shirt or should I wear this maroon shirt?” Mark [Waters, the director] and Tina [Fey] had their backs to me, and I said, “I’d go with the merlot.” I don’t even know where that line came from, but they both whipped around and started laughing. They went on with the audition with Amanda and then the casting assistant said, “Hey, it’s your turn next.” I walked into the room, and Mark and Tina were like, “You?! We thought you worked here; we didn’t know you were auditioning. Now we’re excited — we like you!” It was a really great way to come in and [get noticed]. But then, according to the E! True Hollywood Story, (laughs) Mark said my audition wasn’t very good but that they just really liked me anyway.

As for Tina Fey—Franzese tells the magazine if she and co-star Amy Poehler were “cool” moms on set:

Tina was still the head writer of SNL so she was back and forth between the set [in Toronto] and New York, and Amy was still on SNL as well. They would come in Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the film, and go back Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to prep for the SNL broadcast. But when they were in town we did hang out. We hung out with Amy a lot; Tina isn’t crazy about flying, so they would drive her in from New York. And Amy would just go on Lorne’s jet so she’d get in sooner and just be around a lot more. The wrap party was insane — it was karaoke. I just remember singing “Love Shack” with Amy, and later me and Lizzy doing back up for her on Eminem songs.

OK, so what about that famous Instagram reunion with Lohan:

There’s been talks of trying to figure out schedules for all of us to get together for something, but everyone’s so busy. I do talk to Lizzy and I talk to Lacey pretty often. I talk to Lindsay; every time I see Amanda, it’s great. We run into each other more than we make plans with each other. Amy Poehler as well, because I’m really good friends with Aubrey Plaza so I’ve visited the Parks and Rec set a bunch. Diego Klattenhoff, who played Shane Oman, he and I became really close when he was in L.A. before Homeland,so we hung out a lot. Also, I reconnected with Rajiv [Surendra, who played Kevin G.] after I took that infamous Instagram picture with Lindsay a couple of months ago…[W]e see each other around Hollywood. Hollywood is high school, it’s no different. I went to high school in Fort Lauderdale, for example, and if I went to the waterfront in Fort Lauderdale I would always run into someone I went to school with, and I think it’s kind of like that here in Hollywood, too. If you go out to a hot spot you’re going to see everyone eventually. So Lindsay and I would bump into each each other over the years and it was always cordial.Then last fall I went to the Marco Marco fashion show at L.A. Fashion Week, because he’s a great friend of mine — and they sat Lindsay on the front row four seats down from me. I hadn’t seen her in like two or three years at all; of course all the blogs ran with, “Look, the Mean Girls reunion that almost happened.” But we exchanged numbers while we were there — we were texting during the show and then we began a text friendship, which has led to us hanging out again and being friends.

After ten years, it’s clear that only one pertinent question about this film remains—is anyone still trying to make “fetch” happen?