Lindsay Lohan makes cameo appearance in new 'Mean Girls' movie

Merrick-raised Lindsay Lohan set theater audiences cheering in surprise over the weekend with her previously undisclosed cameo in the “Mean Girls” movie musical.

Lohan, 37, who starred as new girl Cady Heron in the original 2004 high school comedy adapted into a 2018 Broadway production, appears as the moderator in the climactic State Math Championship. As the new movie’s Cady (Angourie Rice) competes for North Shore High, Lohan’s unnamed character tosses comments referencing the original film.

“Well, this has only ever happened once before,” she says when the match ends in a tie, requiring a tiebreaker question. Then after Cady wonders aloud how she can’t remember something about the mathematical value “limits,” the moderator tells her, “Honey, I don’t know your life” — an in-joke reference to Lohan having herself played Cady.

“One of the first things she said to me was, 'I feel like I know you because I played the same character,' and that meant so much to me,” Rice, 23, told Entertainment Weekly. “It just felt so special because it's really rare to play the same character as someone and get to meet them. It's something I've never experienced before.”

Tina Fey, 53, who wrote the original film’s script and the book of the Broadway musical, told EW that the movie studio, Paramount, had asked her, “‘Can you get any of the original ladies?’ And I was, like, ‘I can't fit five people in.’ … I felt like if I could only get one person as a surprise, the original movie is really Lindsay's movie. As great as they all are, she's the heart of that movie. And I thought, well, what could she do? I didn't think [she should] play a teacher. I was trying to think of something that you wouldn't expect. And just to have her do that late in the movie, it also feels like it comes, I hope, at a time where fans weren't expecting one more little surprise. It also lets her be smart, which Cady is.”

Co-director Samantha Jayne [Siegel], 34, told Indiewire.com that the “14-year-old girl living inside of me … was just exploding with joy and disbelief” at getting the work with Lohan. “I just didn’t understand how I would function as director and do my job. We did it. We got through it. Because I overcame my just pure unbridled joy and excitement to be able to speak to her. She was so wonderful. So warm.”

Fey, Jayne revealed, “was on set that day, and to see them reunited, it was just so beautiful.” As well, Lohan “was so kind to the cast; so wonderful with Angourie.”

Lohan, who has not commented publicly on the cameo, had reunited with castmates Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, Rajiv Surendra and Daniel Franzese in a series of Walmart “Black Friday” commercials last year. She also walked the red carpet at the new movie's premiere last week in Manhattan.