Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan on Their ‘Freaky Friday’ Reunion (Exclusive)

On a vast soundstage on the Disney lot in Burbank, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are experiencing a little déjà vu.

It’s the day after they wrapped shooting on the long-awaited sequel Freakier Friday, in theaters Aug. 8, and the two have come back to work one final day for their PEOPLE cover shoot. But in keeping with the mysticism of the body-swapping 1972 book by Mary Rodgers, which spawned Curtis and Lohan’s hit 2003 adaptation Freaky Friday (Jodie Foster had her 1976 version too), there is some woo-woo happening. 

“It’s so weird,” Lohan says as she enters the ­hangar-size space. “It just hit me. This is where we came for our makeup test on the first movie.” Curtis adds, “It feels like home.”

Lohan nods. “Life is so full circle sometimes.”

Of course, Curtis and Lohan were both reared on Hollywood soundstages such as this one. The former, a child of screen idols Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, who found early fame in the Halloween franchise and is enjoying a recent Oscar-and-Emmy-winning renaissance in films and television. New York-born Lohan grew up right here at Disney, with Lohan’s first film being a different remake, The Parent Trap. Lohan’s first words to Curtis when they met to shoot Freaky Friday in the early 2000s: “Hi Mom.”

And two decades later, the maternal vibes remain. Lohan says they never left. “Jamie was with me at a time in my life when I was going through a lot publicly,” she says. “She was privately really there for me. I can trust her.” 

PEOPLE rejoined Curtis, 66, and Lohan, 39, this spring, just before they promoted Freakier Friday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. In a dressing room deep beneath Caesars Palace, as Lohan shows Curtis video of her 2-year-old son Luai (whom she’s raising with her husband, Bader Shammas, between the U.S. and Dubai) starting to talk, they really do sound like a mother and daughter. Here, part of the conversation from this week’s PEOPLE cover story, on newsstands Friday.

Fans have been waiting for this reunion for a long time. What took so long to get back together?

JAMIE LEE CURTIS: Well, Lindsay and I have been in each other’s lives since we made that movie. That is first and foremost.

LINDSAY LOHAN: It’s the most important thing, I think.

CURTIS: And everybody I’ve ever spoken to has asked, “Will there be a Freaky Friday sequel?” When I went all around the world for Halloween Ends in 2022, every stop, they asked. And the answer was “Lindsay has to be old enough to have had a teenager.” So then obviously Lindsay had this beautiful baby. She came and visited me, brought the baby. At this moment we started really seriously talking about it.

Of course, Lindsay, your son Luai is only 2. But this being the Freaky universe, there are some real parallels with your lives. 

LOHAN: When we started shooting the original, I was 15, about to turn 16.

CURTIS: And I had a 15-year-old daughter at home. And now Julia [Butters, who plays Lindsay’s daughter in the film] is 16. It’s so wild.

The first film came out in 2003. Lindsay, you were 17; Jamie, you were 44. Can
we compare your offscreen lives between now and then?

LOHAN: I’m at ease in my life because I’ve lived, I feel like, such a long life at such a young age. I feel wiser now and very settled. I’ve become such a positive person. It annoys my husband sometimes. He’s like, “You have to see the real s—.” I don’t have to, though! I’m going to think of the positive side.

CURTIS: And I’m telling you, this girl focuses at work. She’s absolutely spot-on, but the minute they say, “Okay, you have five minutes,” she’s like, “Wanna see the baby cam?” We’re both comfortable in our own skin. And in my life, in all of the great ways that being old and sober and having let go of all my vanity, or much of it . . . I have really been able to just let it rip in my work for, now, the last five, six years.

It’s apparent that there would be no Freakier Friday if not for your friendship.

CURTIS: I know I can trust her. I can’t say that about a lot of people. I do know that if I tell her something, it’s gonna stay with her. We’ve both been through hard things, ’cause we’re alive and life is hard. And we’re not dead yet. So the truth of our experience together, it belies all of the kind of showbizzy stuff. We connected, and we really stayed connected. And that is special and rare for me.

LOHAN: “Safe” is a very important word to me. I have to feel safe around people. And Jamie is one of those people for me. Like, I feel very safe with you. I feel safe telling you things. So it’s—I know you said “trust,” but for me it’s “safe.”

CURTIS: And I’m sure I drive you insane. I talk too much.

LOHAN: But that’s what my mom does too. 

CURTIS: So Lindsay Lohan, 20 years from now, Freakiest Friday? You in?

LOHAN: I’m in.

Take PEOPLE with you! Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more — right to your mailbox.