Mark Waters, the director of the 2003 Freaky Friday film, has reflected on criticisms of the Asian representation in the movie.
Freaky Friday – which recently got the reboot treatment with new sequel, Freakier Friday – starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother and daughter, Tess and Anna, who are constantly falling out with each other.
In the film’s pivotal scene, when the two argue at a Chinese restaurant, owner Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao) and her mother (Lucille Soong) try to help the pair by serving them magic fortune cookies, which swap their souls into each other’s bodies.
Speaking in a new interview, Waters acknowledged the stereotypical representation of the Asian characters. “I was fully aware that it was over the top, and not in the way that I was trying to insult or make fun of any group,” he told Variety.
“We’re doing this just to be absurd. Rosalind Chao is a friend and she was in on the joke. She was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to swing for the fences with this.’ But stepping back from it, of course it’s absolutely absurd but not in a way that is mean-spirited.
“Not from my perspective, nor do I think most people who watch the movie think of as being mean-spirited.”
His comments come after Filipino-Canadian actor Manny Jacinto, who stars in the new film as Lohan’s love interest, said the depiction of Asian characters in the hugely popular Noughties movie “did not age very well”.
Nisha Ganatra, director of the new film, is a Canadian whose parents were first generation immigrants from India. She said of the older movie: “I remember watching it and feeling torn, mostly about the Asian representation… It was something I brought up right away when I had my first meetings with the producers.
“I had a moment of the presentation that was like, ‘problematic Asian representation!’”
There is no repeat of the Chinese restaurant scene in Freakier Friday, but Chao and Soong do give cameo appearances.
Speaking to Variety about his disappointment over not being hired to work on Freakier Friday, Waters said: “Unfortunately, I was not invited to the party. I did raise my hand and say I’d love to be involved somehow, even in a kind of godfather aspect or executive producer. But I was not extended an invitation.”
He added: “I’m very supportive of them making a great new movie. It would have been nice to be involved but now that I’m not, I sort of compartmentalise it for myself. I need to devote my energy to keep making new, original things that are going to be hits and people can remake them in 20 years. So that’s what I’m doing now.”
Freakier Friday – which had a strong box office opening, premiering to $44.5m worldwide – received a two-star review in The Independent, with critic Clarisse Loughrey writing that “Lindsay Lohan deserves better than the unfunny nostalgia of this belated sequel”.
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