Spoiler alert: This story contains Minor spoilers for “Freakalier Friday”, which is now in theaters.
“Freakalier Friday” takes place in the same sunny version of Los Angeles as “Freaky Friday” 2003, where a girl can cycle towards the ocean for a quick preschool session. But this time, director Nisha Ganatra and the production designer Kay Lee (“insecure”) also wanted to present another side of the city.
The rest resumes with Lindsay Lohan returning as a year and Jamie Lee Curtis as mom Tess Coleman, 22 years after their first body change comedy. Now, Anna has her own teenager, Harper, played by Julia Butters – and more chaos follows when Harper’s rivalry with her new half -sister (Sophia Hammons) becomes completely uncontrollable.
“We wanted to move east to more trendy enclaves in Los Angeles, because as an Anna, the character of Lindsay Lohan, grew up and has her own child, as a single mother and rock star, she would probably have naturally and organically navigate east in the districts of Hipper”, Danny Finn.
The “Freak Plus Friday” characters wander in the city, the amount of scooters at Echo Park Lake, passing by the Tropical Café by Silver Lake, the Los Feliz Theater and the Jeni ice cream, obtaining hamburgers at Pete’s in Eagle Rock and leading to the Arts district and the First Street Bridge Downward.
Take all these locations “in a way looked like an independent film,” recalls Lee. “Our director of photography operated the camera and Nisha only worked on a portable instructor, and it was a very small team.”
Although several television series have recently committed to shooting in Los Angeles, “Freaker Friday” is one of the few studio films to shoot in the city. While production continues to spread around the world, only three features of the major studios published in 2024 filmed a large quantity in the 30 miles area, according to Filmla.
“I am obsessed with Los Angeles on cinema. I love the films in Los Angeles and we don’t really have a lot of film opportunities in Los Angeles as far as before, “explains Finn.
Finn was particularly happy to see the star of “Halloween” Curtis return to South Pasadena, where the emblematic Slasher was filmed, for the scenes fixed at Anna. Ganatra, who grew up in the picturesque city, considered the film capturing an atmosphere of John Hughes, according to Finn. “It was really cool to see Laurie go back there,” he says.
The slowdown in production can wreak havoc with family life, while crew members travel the world for work. “Any project that I can film in Los Angeles, I am so grateful,” explains Lee. “We have the best crews and the best resources. I feel like I had the chance to work on programs that really show different parts of the or to create a the suitable for history. And I am sad that it is not as busy as it was.”
“It will be a team effort and he will take a village to keep the production here,” says Finn. “We want to at least be on this list of one of the biggest places to film. I never bet against”
“The closure of the first street bridge for this car waterfall has been a few phone calls and many emails and some procedures step by step,” observes the director of the location, “I do not think there is another city that has the infrastructure to achieve something of this magnitude with a few strikes and conversations.”
Below, Lee and Finn detail some of the most important places that have shaped the appearance of “more bizarre Friday” – and how several places were affected later by the devastating fires of January.
“Freakalier Friday” returned to shoot Coleman Family House in Pacific Palisades, but the house was then burned in the fires of Los Angeles.
Disney
Coleman house
The traditional style house in which Anna grew up from “Freaky Friday” was located in the Pacific Palisades. The “Friak Plus Friday” fired in the summer of 2024 and six months later, the whole district was erased in the fire of the Palisades. Through the city, the film’s pickleball tournament was shot to the Altadena Town & Country Club, which was also lost in fires.
But even before the fires, the filmmakers were not even sure that they could return to the original house.
“It was important for Nisha and for the team to be able to put a line back through this – the white fence and the white ceiling and how gentle and beautiful it was. And so we wanted to keep it like the Coleman house. We wanted to create this connection, ”explains Lee.
But establishing contact was not easy at first. Finn says that after the crew rang the door and left notes at home, they were perplexed when they never heard. He finally found the home phone number in the documents of the first film.
“So I find this fixed and this phone number in this 20 -year -old binder, and I launch a Mary’s hail and I call and an old answering machine answers. Two minutes later, a phone number called, a different phone number, the same regional code. And she said “Hi, it’s me”. He was the same owner. (The owner, an artist, had painted upstairs with headphones and had not heard the doorbell or had noticed the flyers.)
“It was therefore the only place in the original film to which we have returned,” said Finn, “on what was supposed to be our last day of production, most of the main actors worked there, so it was a cool way to wrap. It is so tragic that we lost this house. All this block is gone.”
Lindsay Lohan Visit Chad Michael Murray at the Hollywood Record Salon.
Walt Disney Collection Co./courtesy Everett
The record lounge
Curtis and Lohan will visit the former Lohan flame in the first film, Chad Michael Murray, in his funky record store in the Hollywood vinyl district. But the team released the store to give it an additional texture.
“She has an old friend who has a record store in Hollywood, and in the film, his name is The Record Parlour. And in real life, it’s the record show and it’s a big vinyl shop on Selma,” said Finn.
Lee explains: “When you enter, it’s a lot like a collection space and there are tons and tons of records, and it is really difficult to see the space in itself. But I really felt that I could really see the possibility.
Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons make the scene at the Bachelorette Party at Break Room 86.
Walt Disney Collection Co./courtesy Everett
The Line Hotel, Openaire Restaurant and Break Room 86
The Line Hotel in Koreatown provided two important settings for “Freaker Friday”. The wedding rehearsal dinner was turned to Openaire, the lush roof space inspired by the greenhouse which has become the restaurant of the father of Lilly. And Ella’s Bachelor Festival was rightly held in the Hotel 86 break room, the club on the retro theme where customers enter by an automatic distributor near the loading quay. The club’s video monitors wall inspired Lee to build a range of television screens that play scenes from Anna’s life during the party. Meanwhile, the cashier in charge of fortune drags in an area on the celestial theme decorated with disco balls.
“The Line Hotel is really great to work, they have always been very friendly with filming and shooting,” explains Lee. The scene of the nightclub looked like: “This is an extension of the character of Anna and who are her group comrades and her friends, really like her past,” explains Lee.
Pink Slip recovers the group from a culminating representation of Wiltern Theater.
Walt Disney Co.
The Wiltern theater
Anyone who saw the versions of 2003 (or 1976) knows that at one point, the characters who exchanged the body will eventually have their own body. Finally, this occurs during a concert for Anna’s client, the popular musician Ella – who has a reminder performance of the old Anna Pink Slip group. Lee explains that the silver -silver star of Ella star stage, the stage decorations and the lighting all recall on the stand of Madame Jen, the fortune dite of the Bachelorette festival, which was responsible for the provoked of the quadruple exchange.
“We connect a little celestial symbolism, adding stars and the passage of the moon.” Weird Friday “occurred on a full moon. We really try to draw elements from Madame Jen and link her to the final concert when returned.
The concert at the Historic Art Deco Theater was a massive company, with so many substantive actors who would normally fulfill the theater during a real representation. The scene was so vast that it required another type of shooting permit for a mass event. “It was really shot as a concert film, hundreds and hundreds of people,” said Finn.
In the end, “Freakier Friday” became a showcase for filming in the director of Los Angeles Ganatra “I really wanted to open it and make it an embrace, like” I Heart la “, but in a different way from what you would normally see,” explains Lee.
