“That song takes place with me in a La-Z-Boy chair with a sleeping little boy in my lap,” Blickenstaff explains. “It’s one of those magical theatrical moments where it’s all about the audience watching a singer in one place. You can sustain that on stage, but that’s really difficult to do cinematically. They came up with all these different ideas — maybe she’d be walking through the house, looking at photos on the wall — but they just couldn’t make it active enough.”
Another song Blickenstaff wishes she could have salvaged is “Busted,” in which Katherine and Ellie — along with several other pairs of parents and children — discover each other’s vices. “That was a really good one,” she says, “and I think it would have been really fun in the movie.”
And because I always have to be that guy, I asked Blickenstaff about the movie’s magical (and musical) climax, when Katherine and Ellie return to their original bodies in flurry of lights and colors… in front of all the wedding guests. It’s a moment she and Zuehlsdorff actually discussed with director Steve Carr.
“I was like, ‘Do you think maybe the guests will be freaked out?’” she recalls with a laugh. “But that’s one of those suspension of disbelief things. The show is inherently magical, and we’re hoping that if you can believe that their souls would swap, we’re also going to believe that the guests would be totally fine watching their bodies change places.”
Your thoughts on Freaky Friday ? For fans of the musical, which changes stood out to you the most? Grade it below, then drop a comment with your full review.
