Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan have been through a lot together – they even swapped bodies for a brief period in 2003. Now they are together again to promote the reboot of Freaky Friday, said cult teen comedy where they played a mother and daughter who woke up in each other’s bodies after an argument in a Chinese restaurant, suitably called Freakier Friday.

A lot has happened since the first film was made more than 20 years ago. Curtis, for her part, is now an Oscar, BAFTA and Emmy-winning actress whose recent turns in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Knives Out and The Last Showgirl have made her one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood.

Lohan, an undisputed noughties icon, went on to star in the equally beloved teen comedy Mean Girls the year after Freaky Friday came out. The following years saw her release her own music and star in comedies like Herbie: Fully Loaded and Just My Luck, before stardom started to take its toll. The year 2006 marked the start of a decade of personal struggle for the Parent Trap actress, who became a tabloid fixture with regular reports about her court appearances, relationships, stints in rehab and changes to her image – both physical and public. However, after signing a multi-picture deal with Netflix in 2022, Lohan has made a welcome comeback. She has fronted several feverishly popular films on the streaming platform including Falling for Christmas, Irish Wish and Our Little Secret. She has also just re-teamed with Disney on Hulu’s new series Count My Lies, an adaptation of the suspense thriller novel of the same name.

All the while, though, Curtis and Lohan have somehow managed to remain treasured friends. ‘I’ve known Lindsay since she was 15,’ Curtis told Entertainment Weekly in their joint cover interview. ‘That’s just an extraordinary thing, to watch someone walk through life.’

And it’s not just ‘that weird thing you do when you’re doing movie promotion’, Curtis insists – after commentary online suggested their bond seemed ‘fake’ – their connection runs much deeper.

In fact, it was Curtis who pushed for Freakier Friday to come to life. ‘In every country I went to [to promote her 2022 horror film Halloween Ends], the only consistent question I got was “When are you making another Freaky Friday?”’ It’s a question she started to ask herself. Lohan was in Ireland filming Irish Wish when she got the call up. ‘I was like, “Yes, I’m in, let’s do it.” 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,’ the actress added.

‘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. To have that chance again, it doesn’t happen much. I felt lucky to be able to do it.’

The two stars might feel lucky in real life, but the characters they play on screen, Anna and Tess Coleman, are prone to a twist in fate. In the new film, we find them 22 years later and Tess and Anna are still navigating the challenges of their own mother-daughter relationship, but they have new relationships to contend with too. And so, as fate would have it, another body swap occurs, but this time Anna swaps with her own daughter and Tess swaps with her future step-granddaughter. Fans can rest assured, Freakier Friday will also see the return of Anna’s high school beau Jake, played by Chad Michael Murray and her stepdad Ryan, played by Mark Harmon.

However, the complexity of motherhood is something that has bonded Curtis and Lohan offscreen too. Curtis has two children, Ruby and Annie, who were 15 and five when the first film was being made. In July 2023, Lohan welcomed her first child, a son named Luai, with her husband Bader Shammas. It’s no secret that they have bonded over these experiences.

‘Everything I do is [about] what’s going to work for my family,’ Lohan explained. ‘If something works around that, it’s meant to happen. If it doesn’t work around that, it’s a no-go.’ Curtis recalls having the same priorities the first time round. ‘If [Freaky Friday] filmed outside California, I wouldn’t have been in the movie. If it shot in Vancouver, I wouldn’t have done it because I had kids. Balancing motherhood is a big part of our lives, but it’s also a big part of the movie. It’s the story of the movie.’

If life imitates art, then, Lohan and Curtis’s mother-daughter-esque bond in real life is hardly surprising, especially when you consider how long ago it was formed. Sophia Hammons, who is one of the new, younger stars in the sequel, joked that ‘Jamie really did act like Lindsay’s mom on set’. Luckily, it didn’t take long before she was invited into that familial dynamic. ‘We’re always getting kisses on the forehead or cheek. We slowly became part of that circle, too,’ she added.

As members of the Freaky Friday family, Curtis is right to say she and Lohan have watched each other walk through life. For their lives to be intertwined again – even if it’s not in a supernatural way this time – in the reboot is something to behold, and something fans who grew up watching the film are bound to relish. ‘I understand the depth of the woman you’ve become,’ Curtis told Lohan on set. ‘I couldn’t freaking do that at your age. I wouldn’t have known how to do that. That speaks volumes to the woman she’s become, the type of human she is, the type of mother, wife, friend.’

If the moral of Freaky Friday was for their characters to swap lives and learn a lesson in empathy, understanding and mutual respect, for Curtis and Lohan, it’s paid dividends in real life.