Back in October, Tina Fey told Vulture that she was exploring the idea of turning her classic teen comedy Mean Girls into a Broadway musical, and when we caught up with Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, last night at the premiere of Fey’s new film Admission, he had some heartening news to report. “It’s actually becoming a thing!†said Richmond, who scored 30 Rock and will be writing the new Mean Girls tunes. “We’re taking meetings with people; I’ve profiled Broadway folks, who are talking to us about it. It’s a long process — a year, two years, however long it might take. We watch Smash, so we know how it works!â€
How much of it is written so far? Well … “Nothing, really,†Richmond admitted. “It’s all just laid out structure-wise right now. That’s how early we are. Because you have to take a three-act structure and turn it into a two-act structure and start thinking about it like that, and we’re working! We’re working on it, okay?â€
Still, Richmond has a pretty good sense of the music so far: “I think there will be a fair amount of songs to move the action forward, but because Tina’s dialogue in the movie is so funny, there will be a lot of room in there for that, for sure. We’re going to keep those jokes in there. ‘Fetch’ will be a song, for sure, absolutely. And it will probably reprise itself at some point, just so you know. Gretchen Wieners will have a song. That’s all I can say. But it is fun to think about who is going to get a song — like, Damian will have a couple of songs.†Give this man all the Tonys.