Lindsay Lohan on motherhood, acting again and the Freaky Friday sequel

It has been more than two decades since the body-swap comedy that captured the complexities of mother-daughter relationships became a global hit.

Now Freakier Friday sees Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunite in a sequel that explores those same themes from a very different stage in life.

The film picks up with Lohan’s character, Anna, having a daughter of her own and dealing with the challenges of also taking on a stepdaughter. The family dynamic gets freakier as there is a quadruple body-swapping.

At the European premiere for the film in London’s Leicester Square, Lindsay Lohan told the BBC that every part of her wanted to make a sequel to the beloved 2003 hit.

“Fans love the movie and there’s such a strong loyalty,” she explains. “It made people so happy and I like to make movies that make people feel joy.

“There’s so much going on in the word now that it’s nice to make something that allows people to forget about what’s going on.”

The film consolidates Lohan’s return to Hollywood – she was absent for much of the 2010s and made her return to the big screen in 2022 with Falling for Christmas.

This is her first film with Disney in more than a decade but is probably not the last as she says if fans love Freakier Friday they could expect the freakiest of sequels.

The star, who rose to fame in the Parent Trap, tells me that she was not nervous about returning to acting as she loves what she does “and I know that always shows through in my work”.

She adds that her return to acting was all about finding the right time, and the 39-year-old has had a busy few years having married financier Bader Shammas in 2022 and borne a son a year later.

She says being a parent has given her a new perspective on the mother-child relationship in the film and helped her to relate more to it.

“When you become a mum, your whole life changes and it’s important to be able to balance work and being a mum which is definitely a learning process.”

Lohan has been in the public eye for almost three decades and had a turbulent time in her 20s – she was arrested a number of times for various offenses and spent time in rehab on various occasions.

She tells the BBC that looking back she would tell her younger self to not rush and “just slow down and breathe because it’s all coming”.

Curtis, who reprises her role as Lohan’s mother in the film, told me that the Freaky Friday sequel did not feel like a reunion with Lohan because “we’ve always been united”.

“I take my job seriously and when I’m the mother or elder to a young actor I take great responsibility to make sure they can always count on my friendship and love,” she says.

“We’ve been united all the away from her teens to her twenties and just recently she bought her baby to meet me in LA.”

The actor, who won an Oscar for superhero comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023, says that the film’s themes of understanding and sympathy are very important right now.

“Understanding is in short supply right now in the world and this film shows that if you can experience each other’s life then maybe you will find some common ground with each other.”

As well as being fun and silly, Curtis adds that the film touches upon the theme of loss which “creates empathy as that’s a universal feeling”.

The 66-year-old said it was her idea to make the sequel and she had contacted Disney recently to say it was time to create it. She had to wait two decades because “we needed Lindsay to be old enough to have a 15-year-old child in the film”.

Chad Michael Murray reprises his role as the noughties heartthrob Jake and newcomer Julia Butters plays Lohan’s on-screen daughter.

More broadly, Freakier Friday is part of a trend of sequels being announced and released.

Last week, a follow-up to Bend it like Beckham was released and there is a lot of anticipation for the Devil Wears Prada sequel.

Freakier Friday is out on Friday 8 August.