Mean Girls Musical: Regina's Bedroom, Closet, and Home

REGINA’s BEDROOM

Jess and me just as we were finishing the Regina bedroom set.

Of course reinterpreting the living space of such an iconic character like Regina George is daunting.

The name, Regina George, itself has become a byword for an archetype of female that has different shades of meaning depending on who you are talking to. Getting it right would mean a lot to a lot of people and there’s so many directions it could go.

• How would her mean-ness be expressed in her bedroom space?

• Is it just about her family being richer than other kids in her community?

• Is her character expressed in interior design status symbols?

• Do teens have bedroom interior design status symbols?

• What’s the perfect mix of girly and fierce but not cute to accurately present Regina’s style and personality?

• How on-trend and cutting edge would the bedroom of a 16 year old living in the suburbs of Illinois realistically be?

Just some questions we thought about and discussed AT LENGTH a ton.

Jessica Petruccelli the set decorator came up with brilliant concepts and ideas from the beginning of the project (e.g. lots of plastic for the queen bee of The Plastics!).

In the background on the left you can see Jessica’s intial vision and moodboard for Regina’s room behind her desk, and in the foreground on the black board you can see our working board of options and ideas in front of my desk.

INCEPTING THE MIND OF AN AMERICAN TEENAGE GIRL

It has been a long time since I was a teenage girl: about three decades.

When that much time has lapsed your sensibilities and design instincts have naturally evolved with your age. The visual representations of teenage girlhood that are most resonant to you are artifacts from another era, a nostalgic memory of a different epoch.

In other words, it only makes sense for you, a woman in your 40’s, to be literally out of touch with teenage girl aesthetic desires.

So how to close that gap and try to represent teenage girlhood in 2024 accurately?

After Jessica, the set decorator, and Kelly, the production designer, nailed down the design concepts and ideas in conversation with the directors, Jess and I had to flesh out what that meant in the concrete details.

So I did a bunch of research to make sure we got the details right.

So on top of tons of googling I:

1. read trend reports

2. got on the phone and interviewed actual teens

3. Spent a lot of time on teens giving bedroom tours on TikTok

4. Went to the local mall and interrogated the teens selling clothes to other teens.

Here’s a glimpse of some of the teens giving tours of their bedrooms TikTok screenshots I took as research and reference.

In the original version of Mean Girls released in 2004, there’s a few scenes in the mall. In 2024, the mall is no longer the essential site of teenage girlhood that it once was.

And while many malls are closing we were in New Jersey, the promised land of malls, and this mall was still going so I decided to go in person and shop at the mall like a teen.

A lot of times it is easier (though slightly more tedious) to shop in person rather than online. For me though, going in person had the added benefit that I could observe what teens were buying or looking at and talk to the teens or young people selling to teens.

I’m so grateful for the teens working at the clothing and shoe stores at the mall. I would ask them to think of the meanest and most popular girl at school (the Regina George in their life) and describe to me what she was wearing.

Because they would narrow down what were the best selling and hot items and I would start selecting. They would watch me chose and gently tell me “no, not those colors.” “not those styles” and I quickly learned whatever I thought was most appealing or looked cool was exactly the opposite of what teens actually liked.

It was jarring to realize that whatever you are inclined to, it is the actual inverse of what kids like.

If you want to feel old, I recommend this exercise to you!

swatching a lot of pink fabrics and wallpapers.

Custom Made Headboard the Swing Cushions

some key elements of Regina’s room we had custom made and here they are in their workshops in progress.

Regina’s room from the original 2004 movie

Regina’s Closet

Particularly daunting was filling Regina’s closet.

A hero female character’s closet as a reveal is always meant as something of a show of force. Think Carrie Bradshaw’s different closets, Cher’s closet in Clueless, and even Peik Lin’s (Awkwafina’s character) closet in Crazy Rich Asians.

When closets are featured like that on screen they almost take on the mythical stature of a Nancy Meyer kitchen. So yeah, the pressure was on.

As set decorators, we are used to thinking in terms of furniture and decor to express characters, context, and story and not clothes. Usually that’s the costume and wardrobe department.

But when an open closet becomes a set, filling it with the right clothes becomes set dressing and not costume and wardrobe!

We really worked so hard on this: on each and every detail (though I will say the beauty and makeup items were dictated by product placement powers greater than ours).

The teenage girl who actually lived in this house, went through the closet with us when were finished and was filled with longing and desire for most of the pieces (so that was gratifying).

set dressers Karl and Pat working on the photo cut outs we used for Regina’s bulletin boards.

ARTWORK FOR REGINAS HOME

Thinking about artwork for Regina’s mom, “not a regular mom, a cool mom” who is that special mix of zany, desperate, and brightly energetic, was fun.

In this one shot you see a lot of the artwork but the space we were filling was so much bigger (which you never see) and below is the sheet I used to help myself keep track of all the pieces.