I wasn’t thinking of the messaging so much as the tenderness of the show. It made me wonder if you’re writing more tenderly.

RICHMOND I think maybe.

FEY A moment of the show that has finally come to work, something that we struggled with, was the way we use Mrs. George — just wanting to represent a mother and acknowledge that grown women are judgmental of each other, too, and that we as the audience look at this character in the first act like: Oh, she’s a clown. And just wanting to find a way to empathize with her. That was important to me especially, and that is, yes, probably because I am a mother now, and when I wrote the movie I was not.

There’s a poster outside the theater with photos of your little awkward-slash-adorable adolescent selves. Nerds are very dear to the show’s heart, it seems.

FEY It’s brought me so much joy, how much audiences have responded to the mathletes segment. I think embracing nerdery is what Cady does in a way. She embraces a part of herself that is not perceived to be cool. That’s at the core of the story.

RICHMOND Rooting for the underdogs.

FEY With the exception of Regina, every other character believes themselves to be an underdog in some way.

NICHOLAW Everyone can relate to that, especially in high school. How I coped was doing musicals. I was a gay kid that couldn’t come out because it was 1979, and I didn’t fit in anywhere and I didn’t like sports and I was called all kinds of things. So I found theater, and I found where I did belong.

Damian is like a valentine to every drama nerd who ever was.

RICHMOND Yeah. There’s this meta thing going on, too, because in the movie, you don’t get to see Damian actually in that world. You know he cares about it, but now you see the Damian within a musical theater structure who loves musical theater.