Julia Butters on Role in Disney’s Freakier Friday Sequel With Lindsay Lohan

When Julia Butters landed her first big role — a scene-stealing turn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — she wasn’t even allowed to watch the whole movie. Her parents let her walk the red carpet at the premiere but whisked her out of the theater long before the flamethrowers came out. “They didn’t want to traumatize a 9-year-old,” she says. “But that carpet was insane — I mean, girl, Britney Spears was there — and I have yet to top that.”

Age appropriateness isn’t a problem in Butters’ latest project. The actress, now 16, stars in Freakier Friday, Disney’s long-awaited sequel to the 2003 body-swap comedy. In this updated and slightly more convoluted version, Lindsay Lohan‘s character, Anna, is now a mom herself — and it’s her teenage daughter, Harper, played by Butters, who ends up switching bodies with her. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis‘ Tess, Anna’s mom, swaps places with Lily — played by newcomer Sophia Hammons — the daughter of Eric, the man played by Manny Jacinto that Anna is about to marry.

Butters initially was invited to audition for either of the two teen roles but ultimately chose Harper because she connected with the character. This meant an added bonus of sharing more screen time with Lohan — a childhood idol thanks to The Parent Trap (the Lohan version, not the one with Hayley Mills and rotary phones). “Harper values L.A. so much, and I’m born and raised here and really related to that,” she says.

The daughter of a Disney animator, Butters got her start with a 2014 episode of Criminal Minds, then landed a recurring role on the ABC sitcom American Housewife at the age of 7. Tarantino was, famously, mindlessly watching an episode when he saw her and cast her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “I owe everything to that role,” Butters says. “It really changed my future — it was like a domino effect that put me into the race for all these other movies.”

Parts in The Gray Man (opposite Ryan Gosling) and The Fabelmans (under the direction of Steven Spielberg) followed, offering a crash course in both performance and on-set professionalism. “I see my co-stars getting asked about what advice they would give to their younger selves all the time, so I’ve always tried not to ask them too many questions about their careers myself, but I learn so much just from watching them,” Butters says. “I think seeing how professional Leonardo was — how he was friendly but never pushed it —inspired me.”

While her male co-stars modeled restraint, the women of Freakier Friday showed Butters a different kind of energy. “Jamie Lee Curtis is so intensely loving — she’s an extreme woman, and for that I truly love her,” she says. She describes Lohan as helpful on set and passionate — about the film and, in real life, her new role as a mother (she gave birth to her first child in July 2023). It was also Butters’ first time working with a female director, Nisha Ganatra, who made Mindy Kaling’s 2019 comedy Late Night. “It was a more personal experience than I’ve had before,” she says. “She really trusted me to give input. She was like a mentor to me.”

That trust came in handy, especially when the role pushed Butters out of her comfort zone — and into the ocean. Her character is an avid surfer, which meant filming several scenes far from shore. The crew brought her out on a boat and strapped her to a flat rig connected to a Jet Ski. “It wound up being one of my favorite things I’ve ever done,” she says. “I was in a wet suit, so I felt like a superhero, and I just couldn’t believe I was out in the middle of the ocean.”

Butters doesn’t have anything lined up post-Freakier Friday, but she’s not concerned. Ever since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, she’s been selective with roles, focused on pacing herself. “I only have so many teenage years,” she says. She’s open to another drama or a character piece, but mostly, she just wants to enjoy the moment — and the rare feeling of walking out of a theater proud of her work.

“Before Freakier Friday, I would criticize everything I did onscreen, like, ‘Why did I say it like that,’ or, ‘I was doing too much,’ ” she says. “But this, it was the first time I walked out of a theater thinking: ‘I can live with this being out there in the world forever. I don’t have any notes for myself.’ “

This story appeared in the July 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.