Point Park grad makes big-screen debut in musical ‘Mean Girls’
Jaquel Spivey has never forgotten how he felt upon discovering Daniel Franzese’s performance as plus-sized and openly gay highschooler Damian Hubbard while watching his older sister’s “Mean Girls” DVD.
“I had never seen that before on any platform, TV show or movie,” he told the Post-Gazette on Wednesday. “That was my first time seeing someone who I felt like I related to.”
Spivey, 25, is a Point Park University-trained stage performer with a Tony Award nomination under his belt for his work in the Broadway run of “A Strange Loop.” He’ll make his big-screen debut Friday in “Mean Girls,” a Tina Fey-penned adaptation of the “Mean Girls” Broadway musical that added music to her enduringly “fetch” teen comedy that will celebrate its 20th anniversary in April.
A lot has changed over the last two decades, like the way Spivey believes Damian would react to having a shoe thrown at him during his talent-show rendition of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.”
“Finding Damian meant finding a person in 2024 when body positivity was not a conversation in 2004,” he said. “Inclusivity was not a conversation. ... Queer people weren’t showcased the way they are now back in 2004. That gives Damian a little bit more power and comfort.
“There’s no shoe being thrown this time. If anything, if you throw that shoe, you just might get your ass beat by the audience.”
Anyone familiar with earlier versions of “Mean Girls” will recognize the story of how impressionable high school student Cady Heron, at the behest of Spivey’s Damian and fellow “art freak” Janis ‘Imi’ike (Auli’i Cravalho), briefly loses herself after infiltrating the school’s most exclusive clique. Angourie Rice takes over for Lindsay Lohan as Cady, and Reneé Rapp steps into Rachel McAdams’ iconic role as queen bee Regina George.
Spivey is a Raleigh, North Carolina, native who spent four years in Pittsburgh earning the Point Park musical theater degree he officially received in 2021. As “a fan of sun,” he was initially put off by this region’s occasional dreariness. Then the Steel City finally won him over with its architecture, proximity to water, and the simple pleasure of going to Schenley Park just to “sit on that big-ass hill with my friends and look at the sunset.”
Though Spivey’s final year-plus at Point Park was defined by being “a part of COVID University,” he “still got the best training they could’ve offered at the time.” He’s still so tight with his Pittsburgh contingent that many of them joined him for the “Mean Girls” premiere earlier this week.
“We didn’t even realize it until we took the picture,” Spivey said.
“Not a damn Point Park reunion, OK!”
It didn’t take long for Spivey to be cast as the main figure in “A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s Tony-winning 2022 musical about a “Lion King” usher writing his own musical about life as a queer Black man.
“It was a dream come true,” he said. “It was something that I didn’t think would happen so soon.
I was expecting to do regional work or move to New York and bust my ass waiting a table or something. To be given an opportunity that not many people get was insane.”
He feels fortunate that both his first Broadway and movie roles allowed him to play characters who retained so many elements of his identity without being the butt of
anyone’s jokes. He found himself “getting in my own head” while transitioning from the stage to a movie set, but his co-stars — including returning 2004 “Mean Girls” cast members Fey and Tim Meadows — “lifted me up and encouraged me” as he got used to the filmmaking process.
“Mean Girls” 2024 was shot last year in small-town New Jersey. Spivey quickly found that unlike a Broadway company that generally spends every day together, he would sometimes go a week or two without seeing certain folks. They still found plenty of time for group outings that helped them bond as a cast while still managing “to keep the youthfulness of the project” intact.
Fans of the “Mean Girls” musical may be disappointed to learn that this film’s creative team ended up cutting the Damian-led numbers “Where Do You Belong?” and “Stop.” Spivey wasn’t thrilled to find that out on the first day of rehearsals, but he wasn’t too upset given that Damian still had more than enough opportunities to shine.
“I can understand that Damian’s job is pretty much to be of assistance to this beautiful story about girls, their relationships and how they interact,” he said. “I dare not think that I need to be pushed to the front when this is a story by a woman, for women. I’m just glad to be of service to this story.”
At least this self-described “musical theater baby” was heavily involved in two genuine showstoppers: “Apex Predator,” in which Damian and Janis explain to Cady why Regina is “the queen of beasts at this beastly school”; and “Revenge Party,” a colorful montage of their master plan to end Regina’s reign of terror that Spivey said accounted for 16 script pages and took two weeks to shoot.
“It was being in that hallway in all that glitter and confetti until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning,” he said of “Revenge Party.” “It was going outside when it feels like it’s 5 degrees and filming under bleachers. When you have a cast full of people who really love the work they’re doing and are also kind and generous, it makes it all worth it.”
For Spivey, “Mean Girls” remains relevant in any form because the “idea of mean people needing to learn a lesson” never goes out of style. He hopes that everyone living on and around his old college stomping grounds checks out this new “Mean Girls” where social media and cell phones “hold more power” than even aburn book.
“I’m very grateful for my time in Pittsburgh,” he said. “I’m very grateful for the community of people who held me up, lifted me up and are still doing it from Pittsburgh. ... I’m hoping to come back soon to Point Park!”