Janis Ian Reveals His Reaction After Playing Tina Fey in Mean Girls

That’s so not fetch. Singer Janis Ian has expressed mixed feelings about Tina Fey naming a Mean Girls character after her.

“I would’ve felt better about it [had she] asked me first,” the 73-year-old performer told in an exclusive interview while promoting her documentary, Janis Ian: Breaking Silence.

“But I think it was well-intended.” In the 2004 comedy written by Fey, Lizzy Caplan portrays Janis Ian, who, along with her best friend Damian Leigh (Daniel Franzese), seeks revenge on her former friend Regina George (Rachel McAdams) by enlisting new girl Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) in their scheme.

Ian revealed that she had to address the situation with the Saturday Night Live alum, 54, after the film’s release but refrained from disclosing the details of their discussion.

“I can’t get into that except to say that there was some unauthorized merchandising,” she explained. “And so we spoke about that and they withdrew it.”

Fey, who has previously spoken about her own nerdy teenage years, seemingly drew inspiration for the character’s name from Ian’s 1975 anthem At Seventeen. The song, which explores themes of social isolation, sold over a million copies and won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1976.

“I thought I was the only person in the world who ever felt like that,” Ian shared. “It would never have occurred to me that other people felt like that. You don’t want anybody to know that you feel ugly or that you feel horrible about yourself.

“I think one of the great things that Seventeen does is it allows people to feel like there’s somebody else who understands and who got through it and who can express their feelings for them.”

Ian’s forthcoming documentary, set for release on March 28, also delves into how she was outed as a lesbian by the Village Voice in the 1970s.

Fortunately, other media outlets did not pick up the story, as the repercussions could have been devastating.

“I would have lost my ability to perform,” Ian recalled. “Nobody would have hired me. I would have lost my record contract. It would have destroyed my career.”

Although she had always been open about her sexuality with friends and family, she considered it a private matter and avoided having her music branded as Janis Ian: Lesbian singer-songwriter. However, her perspective changed after meeting her wife, Patricia Snyder.

“Times had changed,” she explained. “And I realized that this was forever and that I really needed to be public about it and clear about it.”

Ian met Snyder after moving to Nashville in 1989, following the loss of her entire fortune due to a dishonest money manager. She estimates that she lost $2.3 million, five Los Angeles properties, and a duplex overlooking Central Park in New York City.

“Nowadays, it’d be closer to $20 million,” the Grammy winner speculated. Despite this, she refuses to dwell on the past.

“If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had to move to Nashville and I wouldn’t have met Pat,” she reflected.

“And I wouldn’t be sitting here 36 years later and still be with her. So, you gotta look at it that way. Because otherwise, you make yourself crazy.” Ian publicly came out in 1993, and a decade later, she and Snyder married in Toronto, Canada.