Freakier Friday Director ‘Begged’ Jodie Foster for a Nostalgic Cameo in Sequel: ‘She’s Not Going to Do It’

• Nisha Ganatra directs the upcoming Freakier Friday, which reunites Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis for more body-swapping fun after their 2003 hit
• The director said the team “begged” Jodie Foster, star of the original 1976 Freaky Friday, to make a cameo
• Although she “tried everything,” Ganatra was apparently not able to convince Foster

Freakier Friday almost added a dash of freaky nostalgia. 

Nisha Ganatra, director of the Lindsay Lohan- and Jamie Lee Curtis-led sequel (in theaters Aug. 8), tried to bring in the star of the 1976 body-swapping film that launched the Freaky Friday franchise: Jodie Foster. 

“We begged her,” revealed Ganatra, 50, in Entertainment Weekly’s cover story about the upcoming Disney film. “She’s not going to do it.”

PEOPLE has reached out to a Foster rep for comment. 

The Freaky Friday franchise began with the 1976 hit starring Foster, 62, and Barbara Harris. Some TV movie sequels and a stage musical adaptation followed before Lohan, 38, and Curtis, 66, starred in the hit 2003 remake. 

Ganatra told EW that she “never found out why” the Oscar winner declined to have a cameo appearance in Freakier Friday. “We were going to make her the principal at the school,” she recalled, or a teacher at the school of Lohan’s character Anna. 

“Honestly, we tried everything,” said the filmmaker. 

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In a 2002 interview with NPR, Foster reflected on working as a child actor in two very different movies released in 1976: family-friendly Freaky Friday and R-rated Taxi Driver, which earned her an Oscar nomination. “[My mother] really wanted to make sure that I would go back and forth and do different kinds of movies and so that people wouldn’t pigeonhole me as one type of character,” she recalled. “And at that time, you know, Freaky Friday was probably the first feminist movie out there for youngsters.”

Featuring twice as much body-swapping as the films that inspired it, screenwriter Jordan Weiss’ Freakier Friday brings back Lohan as Anna and Curtis as Anna’s mother Tess, adding Anna’s daughter (played by Julia Butters), fiancé (Manny Jacinto) and soon-to-be-daughter-in-law (Sophia Hammons). 

“It’s not very often that you get to work with someone who’s been such a big part of your life on a personal level,” Lohan told EW of reuniting with Curtis. “That was exciting for me, to come back and do a big-screen film with a woman that I admire, that’s part of my life off screen.”

Freakier Friday is in theaters Aug. 8.