'Mean Girls' cast shares the experience filming in their home state of NJ
Asbury Park Press Juan Carlos Castillo
The movie was shot between March and April 2023 in Monmouth Vounty with over a hundred New Jerseyans who were cast as background actors.
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Asbury Park Press
On Wednesdays, we wear pink, and on Fridays, we go to the movies.

Unless you want to disappoint The Plastics, who are back on the big screen with the new “Mean Girls” movie.

The new movie hit theaters Friday, bringing the same vanity and the same sass as the original movie, when it premiered in 2004. But this time, the movie didn’t take place in Ontario, but rather here, in the Garden State and there is a 30% chance that it is already raining.

Between March and April 2023, the movie was shot in the building that used to be Middletown’s Mater Dei Prep High School with hundreds of young New Jerseyans who were cast as extra, background actors. While their roles weren’t necessarily vital for the development of the plot, the filming experience rewarded them with new friendships, the inspiration to pursue a career in the movie industry, or just a trippy experience.

For Riley Ackerson, a Central Regional High School alumni, doing this movie was a great experience. She bonded with her fellow background actors while growing more interested in an acting career.

“After doing this, I could definitely see myself possibly minoring in film and definitely going back and doing more background work,” Ackerson, 21, said.

“But as my favorite thing, definitely the people I met on set,” she added.

“Mean Girls” is a movie about high school girls and their drama. As a background actor, Ackerson performed as one of the students.

Most classroom scenes took about eight hours to shoot while scenes in places with larger crowds, like the school cafeteria, would take about 14 hours to film. When it comes to working long hours to get the perfect shot - the limit does not exist.

“It definitely did seem like we were in high school again,” she said while remembering how the director felt like a teacher giving instructions, while the actors sometimes would break character and start laughing.

But no one felt more in high school than Sean Molicki, a 25-year-old from Middletown who graduated from the same high school where the movie was shot. That's so grool.

“Part of me was like: Am I here to film a movie, or am I here to be back in high school again? It was just so trippy,” he said.

Molicki got involved in acting and theater activities while in high school, but he studied business in college and said he has no plans of pursuing a career in acting.

He applied to be part of the movie because he thought it would be a fun opportunity. Today he’s glad he did it given all the friends he made from New Jersey and area states, and how he had a “mind boggling” experience, now captured in the annals of popular culture.

“The most rewarding part was being able to go back and kind of have one last memory there (his high school). And then, obviously, seeing big stars like Tina Fey and Renee Rapp in my old cafeteria and old auditorium,” he said.

For other background cast members the experience was a jumpstart. Such is the case of Liam Zupp, from Red Bank, who is now about to have his stage debut at the Theatre 80 St Marks in New York City.

But like other cast members said, the most important for him was the connections he made with other budding actors."The most rewarding part was the people I got to see every day. That cast and crew, from principals to background (actors), were all incredibly friendly," Zupp, 24, said.

On Friday night, a group of New Jersey actors featured in the movie went to the AMC Theatre in Freehold to relive the memories and, of course, indulge in the cheeky attitude.