Jamie Lee Curtis called Bob Iger directly to fight for Freakier Friday

During the promotional tour for the Halloween franchise, she said, “In every single city I went to, the only movie they asked me about besides Halloween was Freaky Friday—was there going to be a sequel?” Naturally, she decided to call up Disney CEO Bob Iger. “I said: ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re planning on doing [a sequel], but Lindsay [Lohan] is old enough to have a teenager now, and I’m telling you the market for that movie exists.'”

Her maneuvering didn’t stop there. When she found out the movie was being planned as a streaming release, she called Iger again, “and I called David Greenbaum [Disney Live Action president], and I called Asad Ayaz, who’s the head of marketing, and I said: ‘Guys, I have one word for you: Barbie. If you don’t think the audience that saw Barbie is going to be the audience that goes and sees Freakier Friday, you’re wrong.'”

Uhh, it’s hard to imagine the whole audience that went to see Barbie going to Freakier Friday, but there’s probably some overlap. And hey, good for Curtis for championing the theatrical experience. Curtis describes herself as a hustler and a “weapon of mass promotion,” but it stems from feeling like she had been “limited to a much smaller palette of creative, emotional work.” Now that she’s being given chances, she’s taking advantage of meaty roles like Donna on The Bear. “For me, it was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by Chris [Storer, the show’s creator], and the writing, which leads you … everywhere you need to go—it was exhilarating,” she said. “It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here.”