Over her nearly thirty-year-old regime career, Nisha Ganatra Have tackled almost every stripe of comedy, from sweet romance to crazy workplaces, incorrect identities to screw ball. From movies such as “chutney popcorn” and “Late night” to a truly astonishing range of television directors of gigs (“Girls”, “and just like that”, “Dear White People”, “Last Man On Earth”, “Dollface,” “Deli Boys,” And it’s just a small test), Ganatra knows fun.
During his last three films, however, Ganatra has struck something of a convincing niche, a kind of old -fashioned comedy about women trying to get through the world, often come up against generational misses and misunderstandings and are seen better for it.
All this and, yes, still fun.
When I pointed out this theme in “Late Night,” “The high note,” and her latest edition, This week’s long -awaited ‘Freakier Friday,’ The already rushing filmmaker really triggered. “I miss the old Mike Nichols films where there are only smart women who are smart and have ambitions, and don’t fight for a guy, but just want something out of life,” the director told IndieWire. “‘High note,’ ‘late at night,’ ‘Freakier Friday‘It is all this, all these women have their dreams and what they want and how they want the world to be, and How they want to remain each other’s allies. But it is a struggle and they have to find out and they have to get there together. ”
It’s easy to see why ganatra would gravitate against “freakier friday” thenwho picks up more than twenty years after Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan’s heads and is again concerned about seeing women (now, four!) Navigate their lives and support each other also Being a body changed.
Of course, Ganatra was a big fan of Mark Waters Original 2003, “Freaky Friday.” “I loved it so much, and not just like someone who thought they were Lindsay Lohan and looked at Lindsay Lohan and wanted to be Lindsay Lohan and maybe formed a band that thought they could be like Lindsay Lohan and then realized that they couldn’t be like Lindsay Lohan in a band,” she said with a laugh.
When producer Kristin Burr first gave the Ganatra script to “Freakier Friday” in 2024 (after year Of fans who required a sequel), she added a little warning. “She said,” Ok, yes, your first step is to meet Jamie Lee Curtis and see if she thinks you are right, “reminded the director.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. Ok!” So I drive to Jamie Lee Curti’s house, which is just a surreal meaning to get out of my mouth she was so nervous and I was so nervous You are home and she is your best friend. “
Another thing that may have facilitated the first nerves? Won with which Curtis talked about the material. Most often, the first interaction does not sound like an interview, but a space to change ideas. “She told me all the things she thought did the first special and work, and why she wanted to do this,” Ganatra said.

So what did Curtis love so much about the original? “Of course, she loved the energy to be of the body change,” said the director. “She had a very strange moment of telling me she wasn’t good at physical comedy. I didn’t believe her in a minute, because I was like,” Did I not see you “a fish called Wanda”? Haven’t I seen you in “true lies”? “Cut to (film the movie),” Hello, Jamie, in this scene I thought you could crawl on the ground to hide from Chad (Michael Murray). “She crawls on the ground. hope on the hood of the car. She is 1,000% dedicated with her character, and I think that’s what is so convincing. You can’t remove her eyes from her because she is so unpredictable and so fearless that you as an audience are on the edge of your place being “what should she do?”
The film Arrives twenty -two years after “Freaky Friday” met the theaters in the summer of 2003, which made a mint in the process (over $ 160 million all over the world) and apparently inspiring legions of dedicated fans, including Curtis and Lohan. That fan base? It even surprised Ganatra.
“Jamie wanted this to existence, and from all the fans who want it to be by asking her,” she said. “But I was also surprised. I knew Millennial’s love-love-beloved That, I knew Gen X loved, but I didn’t think Gen Z knew the movie as well as they do. Gen Z is the generation that is most wrong and is treated poorly in pop culture right now, so it was really important for me to get it right for Gen Z, not only because you never want Gen Z to come to you, but also because Gen Z has been so messy. ”
And yes, “freakier friday” does not contain one without two Gen Z stars in Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons. This time Curtis’ Tess Coleman is now a grandmother, and while she loves “co -parents” daughter Anna (Lohan) older teen Harper (butters), Anna struggles to find her own foot as a parent. When she falls in love with the handsome new father Eric at Harper’s School (Manny Jacinto), looks up, but what is it? Eric also has a daughter? And she (Hammons) and Harper hatred each other? Body change and life lessons, Ahoy!
If both Tess and Anna are (lovingly) dangled for their respective ages and all the generational things that come between them, so do the girls. Our first introduction to Harper? A sign on her bedroom that requires “no ejaculation.” How, I asked Ganatra, do you find the boundary between “We will make fun of you too” but “We also want you to laugh”?

“It’s always so hard to explain it tonally, how do you ride that line between what is ok and what seems to mean?”, She said. “None of the humor can or should seem meaningful, especially in a movie like this. But for Gen Z, it was about admitting how smart they are and how they really care. I think Gen Z will save us in many ways, because they really care about trying to fix all problems.”
Ganatra applies the same sense of care to his work. Think about how tough it is to actually get a body change comedy to work, the many perspectives that need to be taken into account, comments that must be telegraphy, the crazy performance that goes to playing someone who also plays someone himself. It’s not easy.
“I sometimes think people are like,” oh, studio body swap comedy, blah, anything“But when you look at them you realize that it is quite sophisticated what these actors are doing,” she said. “They not only play their character, but they also play another character Inside of their character. And if you don’t believe it, the whole movie does stop working directly, right? The moment when they change, if you don’t buy it, your movie is ready. It did not direct four actors, it directed eight character. So how do I get to essence and this Essence and does the most comedy make the joy of the experience of being in each other’s lives? “
For Ganatra, such considerations are part of being a good comedy director, something she does not take for granted (or for silly).
“I’m super biased that I think comedy people can do anything, I think comedy people can make drama, but I don’t think drama people can necessarily make comedy,” the director said. “At some point it will come to your taste and what you think is fun and what you do not. I think it is about creating an environment where everyone feels free to look up everything and you shoot everything. I have been wrong so many times, so you shoot everything as if you are right, and then you shoot everything as if you are wrong, and then you have the best to choose.”

Ganatra specifically pointed to another important woman in her life: her long -term editor Eleanor Infante. “She doesn’t hesitate to say,” Hi, it doesn’t work “or” It’s not fun “or” No, we don’t. “When I was at NYU, I got the privilege of sitting in the editing room with Thelma Schoonmacher and Martin Scorsese, and I saw how he has to fight for every single shot he gets. And then you realize why the movie comes out as it does.
Still, maybe doing good comedy comes to something deceptively simple: really looking for what’s fun. “I think we had a lot of fun because we all tried to make each other laugh,” Ganatra said. “Every scene, everyone tried to top each other with more and more fun and more and more joy. We just had a fantastic environment, a really supportive environment where everyone lets us make our most bananas ideas.”
While the film is full of both original ideas and calls for the original (a pink grinding concert was a must for the film’s producers from the beginning, while a final scene involved Chad Michael Murray’s character was a product of the actor that was also available for an extra day and Ganatra really wanted to make the most of it), lots of on-hand. Comedy works best if you try something new, and you can really only do it if everyone is down on, yes, clown.
The filmmaker pointed to an outrageous scene in the film where Curtis and Lohan show up in Murray’s character’s record store. When Lohan (as Harper like Anna) tries to revive the flame with Murray’s Jake, Curtis (as Lily as Tess) tries to advise while hiding her face behind a variety of discs.
“I was,” Ok, Jamie, I think you should take you around the record store by covering yourself in every place, “and she was like,” OK, which discs do I use? “, She reminded.” I was like, “Well, here are the six I have cleared, and I think that said should be when you say she would be quiet, and this person should be for this. And she is the one who, ‘oh, Britney (spears) should be the one I would not believe in her.”
She would like more of them. As she reads to release the movie, Ganatra obviously traveled a wave of scams, one that she hopes to be able to do Parlay to do, yes, more of this.
“It made me happy, so I just hope I keep doing it,” she said. “Many women do not get directly studio films and it is something I do not take for granted. So I am just hopeful that this dream does not end and I can continue to make movies, because it is something I think we all want to do, express ourselves. I hope this does well and we all get a chance to do it again.”
A Walt Disney Pictures edition, “Freakier Friday” is in theaters on Friday 8 August.