It seems to be pretty normal for co-stars to bond while they’re waiting around on a movie set. But it’s probably a little harder for that bonding to happen when one actor is a teenager and the other is a Hollywood icon with several decades of acting experience under her belt. Despite those odds, though, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan were able to connect in one unforgettable way when they filmed Freaky Friday together — so much so that they use a secret code they developed on set to keep in touch even today.
If you were coming of age in 2003, there’s a good chance the remake of Disney’s classic body swap comedy Freaky Friday was a staple in your pop culture experience. The two stars delivered outstanding performances as a mother and daughter who get a chance to walk in each other’s shoes, to both disastrous and miraculous results.
Part of what made Freaky Friday a success was that the two actresses were electric together on-screen and managed to make it seem very believable that they were trapped in each others’ bodies. It turns out that their on-screen chemistry was forged through some off-camera antics. In a recent installment of Yahoo’s Role Recall, Jamie Lee Curtis reminisced about her time on the Disney movie’s set and how she and Lindsay Lohan managed to get close in between takes:
There’s a song called ‘Like I Love You’ by Justin Timberlake. And Lindsay and I were doing a scene in a car and there was a lot of time in between takes. And there’s a rap in the middle of that song by Clipse. She and I were trying to learn the words. And we were like sitting there with a pad. … We were writing them down and then we would do the scene and then we’d play the song and try to lip-sync the few words that we knew. I’m telling you, we laughed. And that is my secret code with her. ‘What was the song we were lip-syncing to in the car?’
While the Halloween legend’s story is heart-warming, she did create one small problem by telling it. She continued:
Now I’ve given it away. But I have another one.
For now, it seems like she’ll be keeping her other Freaky Friday memories to herself. It’s cool to know that the actresses are still on inside joke terms nearly 20 years after they co-starred together.
While they haven’t shared the screen together again yet, both women have some exciting new projects in the works for their fans. Lindsay Lohan is returning to her comedic roots and has teamed with Netflix for a new film. In addition to a few other films, following the success of Halloween Kills — a different kind of freaky film altogether – Jamie Lee Curtis will return to the big screen again next year for what could be an epic conclusion to Laurie Strode’s story in Halloween Ends.