The Parent Trap’s Meredith Blake has been a pop culture icon and fixture of the gay community since she first graced the screen in 1998 — and Elaine Hendrix thinks she may know why.
“First and foremost: the fashion. I think there’s also a classicness to Meredith that the gays gravitate towards,” Hendrix, 54, who portrayed Meredith in the Nancy Meyers classic, told Us Weekly exclusively at the opening night of Ginger Twinsies — a new Parent Trap parody off-Broadway for which she serves as a producer — on Thursday, July 24. “And then her fabulousness and wanting the life that she was building for herself and the way she stood up for herself and set boundaries.”
Hendrix added: “I mean, I really think Meredith might have been a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. I don’t know if that’s ever been said out loud, but it’s possible.”
Ginger Twinsies is an outlandish comedy that celebrates The Parent Trap, while also calling out all of its idiosyncrasies and the moments that have — and haven’t — stood the test of time. At one point in the show, Meredith Blake (played by Phillip Taratula) addresses the audience directly, challenging them to question whether Meredith is truly the villain of the story.
Lindsay Lohan just staged the ultimate Parent Trap reunion! Nearly 27 years after its release, Lohan, 39, reunited with two of her famous costars from the hit Disney film on Tuesday, July 22, at the world premiere of her latest movie, Freakier Friday. The actress was spotted posing on the Los Angeles red carpet with […]
Hendrix certainly doesn’t think so.
“Meredith Blake never was, never will be, and certainly is not in this moment in time, the villain,” she told Us. “Never, ever.”
Elaine Hendrix in ‘The Parent Trap’, 1998. Walt Disney Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
The off-Broadway show’s writer and director, Kevin Zak, has his own thoughts.
“I don’t want to do the full Disney thing or the Wicked thing where you give full apologies to the wicked witch,” he told Us on opening night. “Everyone has dark and light sides. Everyone is flawed. However, you have to judge for yourself when you come and see [the show] who the real villains of the piece are.”
More than three decades after Hayley Mills wooed fans in 1961’s The Parent Trap, Disney rebooted the classic and produced an equally as big box office hit. The 1998 film, which starred Lindsay Lohan as identical twins, Annie James and Hallie Parker, followed the sisters after they are reunited while attending the same Camp Walden […]
He added: “I’m on Meredith’s side, but there’s room for interpretation. If I was 26, who doesn’t want security? Especially millennials. We’ve been through wars, national tragedies, pandemics, recessions.”
Just two nights before she spoke to Us on the Ginger Twinsies red carpet, Hendrix reunited with Lindsay Lohan, who played both Annie and Hallie in The Parent Trap, and Lisa Ann Walter, who played Chessie, for the first time since they shot the movie over 25 years ago.
“I made a cameo in Freakier Friday, and so I got to meet up with Lindsay last year during filming, but Lisa hadn’t seen her. And then we hadn’t, all three of us, been together since the movie originally came out,” Hendrix told Us. “It was — special is too soft of a word. You can’t describe it because this movie means so much to so many people and it was such an incredible experience filming it. And then the love that we continue to receive is just — we would’ve never known that that was going to happen. And so whenever we come together, it’s just magical.”
Just as Ginger Twinsies takes over the Orpheum Theatre, Lohan, 39, and Jamie Lee Curtis are reprising their iconic mother-daughter-body-swapping roles in Freakier Friday, out August 8 — and Hendrix couldn’t be more proud of her costar.
“Lindsay lived her life. She was young and had fun, and she worked, and she made a name [for herself] and became an icon,” Hendrix said. “And now as the natural progression, now she’s becoming a mom and a wife and still working and being an icon … I’m so happy for her and she’s in such a great place and emanating so much joy.”
