“Abbott Elementary” star Lisa Ann Walter shared with People that she’d be up for revisiting her 1998 version of the classic “Parent Trap,” stating, “Yes, absolutely.” She was happy to discuss her “Parent Trap” costar, Lindsay Lohan, at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday.
“I would love to go back for another version of it — or if [Lohan] wants to come on to our show, I’d love that, too,” she added.
This isn’t the first time Walter has discussed bringing Lohan onto the hit ABC sitcom. In January, she told Entertainment Weekly that the younger actress could play a relative. “I guess we’d have to make her a relative since we’re both redheads — since I’m a ‘redhead,’ and she actually is,” Walter explained.
In February, Walter brought up the possibility of reviving her “Parent Trap” character again, this time at the SAG Awards. She told E! News, “What we get online more than anything is kids that are now in their 20s and 30s that say, ‘You were our childhood and we grew up with you.'”
“I think, like ‘Abbott Elementary,’ there is just a real longing for people to feel good and safe, and so any movie like that, yeah, let’s do it.”
Walter added, “I think that there is a nostalgia [and] a longing for movies that are feel good that also are multi-generational. ‘Parent Trap’ also was a romance and it appealed to grown people, to grown women, to people that want to see a happy ending after something is tragic and a family has divorced.”
The popular “Parent Trap” remake starred Lohan in her film debut as identical twins Hallie Parker and Annie James. The pair are set on reuniting their divorced parents, played by the late Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid. Walter played Chessy, the nanny to Quaid’s daughter Hallie.
The original 1961 film starred Hayley Mills as twins Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers. Though the movie wasn’t a major success at the box office, Mills was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award at the 33rd Oscars ceremony and the film became a classic of the Disney canon. She shot the movie after wrapping production on “Pollyanna.”
In 2021, Mills told Vulture that her introduction to Hollywood was relatively smooth. Of “Parent Trap,” Mills told the outlet, “I didn’t have to audition. I was so lucky. I did one audition when I was 12 for the first movie I ever made. And I didn’t even feel that that was an audition. It was more like a screen test. I never felt like the job depended upon me.”
The actress enjoyed a strong relationship with Disney for two decades. She added, “And after that, I never did another audition for years. The first time I had to do an audition, I think, was 20 years later. And it was a horrible shock! It’s a dreadful experience to have to go through.”
In an interview with TheWrap from the same year, Mills admitted there were drawbacks to fame — namely her education. As she said, “It was a great childhood in many respects. I loved the Disney studio, and Walt, and there was never any exploitation. Still, I had to forfeit friends, as I was always leaving my boarding school and struggling to catch up. I believe education is fundamental and mine definitely was impacted.”
