Life-Size 2: Tyra Banks confirms Francia Raisa will be joining the cast for the sequel
Picture this: the queen of America's Next Top Model and Selena Gomez's best friend and kidney donor, both starring in a TV series together. If you haven't pieced the clues together - Tyra Banks and Francia Raisa are gearing up to co-star in 'Life-Size 2' and the reveal photo of the news was all kinds of epic! Trust Banks to just know how to steal a whopping amount of attention when big news is around the corner. The 44-year-old supermodel made the announcement on Twitter, spilling that the 29-year-old star of 'The Secret Life of an American Teenager' will be joining her for the TV-movie sequel that's premiering on Freeform this winter.
Banks announced on Twitter that Francia is the right actress for the job - a role which initially used to be Lindsay Lohan's since the 'Mean Girls' star had starred in the original movie as Casey Stuart, all the way back in 2002. Casey was a tomboy that transforms Eve (Banks) - a Barbie-doll equivalent - into a real person after her attempts at resurrecting her own deceased mother with a magic spell, goes slightly wrong. There has been no response from Lohan's side about the casting news so far.
“Now filming: LIFE SIZE 2,” Banks, who is also the executive producer, captioned the adorable photo of her hugging Raisa. She captioned it: “It’s time y’all! You’ve waited long enough. Could not find one single woman more perfect to co-star with Eve than the magnificently fierce @franciaraisa. See you on @FreeformTV this holiday season! #LifeSize2 #ShineBrightShineFar“.
Even though Banks did not reveal which role Raisa has bagged, it's safe to conclude that she's most probably going to be the protagonist, Casey Stuart. The first news of the sequel was revealed in April 2017, by Banks herself, as she had announced that Life-Size 2 would make its debut on Freeform as a “fun, edgy, modern Christmas movie." - 18 years post the original came out.
The original movie's theme song, 'Be a Star,' is also getting its own remixed version, which Banks promised, will sound “a lot more current” than the original. “I am going to dust off my retired vocal chords for Life-Size 2,” she had told Entertainment Weekly in March 2018. “I’d love to find a top producer that everybody knows, like a household name, to do the music,” she said. “And a beautiful sound technician to auto-tune the hell out of my voice… Those words [“be a star”] will be in there some way, but it’ll sound totally new… We’re going for club banger as opposed to nursery school rhyme this time!”
While Banks had also previously mentioned that Lohan is “very interested in returning” for the second film, so far there's been no news of her with connection to the movie. “Lindsay and I have been slipping into each other’s DM’s a lot lately,” Banks told the outlet of the second film while at TCA in August 2017. “I think she’s very interested in returning. It’s about figuring out what that role is. I’d like it to be kind of robust.”
She continued: “I’m not looking for a Lindsay cameo, I’m looking for her to have something pretty meaty in Life-Size 2, so we shall see what our writer comes up with.”
