Entertainment
Lili Reinhart Is Going Full Regina George in ‘Forbidden Fruits’ With Lola Tung
The moment I found out Forbidden Fruits would star Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Alexandra Shipp, and Victoria Pedretti, I was instantly sold. But, then I heard Meredith Alloway dub her movie, “Mean Girls, but a slasher,” and I quietly sat there wondering, “Is she making this movie for me?” I wouldn’t be surprised if many others felt that same way. Not only has this hugely talented all-star ensemble amassed quite the following over the years, but Forbidden Fruits is channeling the vibes of a number of iconic and beloved clique movies like Mean Girls, The Craft, Jennifer’s Body, and then some.
The movie takes place entirely in a mall where The Fruits are the queen bees. Led by Reinhart’s Apple, by day, The Fruits run one of the hottest stores in the mall, Free Eden. By night? They turn to witchcraft. When Apple, Cherry (Pedretti), and Fig (Shipp) cross paths with Lola Tung’s Pumpkin, she appears to be an ideal new member for their coven. But, when Pumpkin begins to question their sisterhood, The Fruits wade into some especially dark territory.
Forbidden Fruits is based on Lily Houghton’s stage play, Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die. Given Houghton and Alloway share a manager, have a number of mutual friends, and also have some similar storytelling interests, they made an ideal match. While visiting the Forbidden Fruits set in the Sherway Gardens Mall in Toronto in March 2025, Alloway recalled:
“I was coming off of a lot of research on female serial killers and female criminals, and so was Lily on another movie, and I was like, ‘Why do we keep having these male serial killer stories? Women kill or commit crimes for very different reasons.’ It’s like the Medea of it all. She did those things to protect her children in her mind. And I was like, ‘I want stories like this. I want to write about women’s dynamics.’ And then I read this play, and I was like, ‘It’s Mean Girls, but a slasher.’ That was the first thing I said, so it’s so crazy that the mall we’re shooting at is where they shot the Mean Girls fountain scene.”
Every ‘Mean Girls’ Needs a Regina George — For ‘Forbidden Fruits,’ It’s Lili Reinhart’s Apple
“Blood should be thicker than water, and when it isn’t, how do you create your own family?”
Casting is vital to any production, but when it comes to a witchcraft movie, finding the perfect coven is make or break.
Reinhart takes on one of the most exciting cinematic opportunities with the role of Apple; she’s challenged with crafting a villainous character you can’t help but love. Reinhart actually boarded Forbidden Fruits while still working on Riverdale, so when filming kicked off, she had been thinking about how to tackle the character for two years.
Reinhart admitted that for a good while, she told people, “I’m playing the villain in a movie!” She continued:
“I had to be like, ‘Wait, wait, wait. I have to play this girl and connect to this woman and be her, and she doesn’t think she’s doing anything wrong, so I can’t think she’s doing anything wrong.’ So, almost weirdly, finding a way and working with a coach to empathize with her actions, which, when you see the movie, you’re like, ‘How does one do that?’ But I did it, and I love her dearly.”
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Another important aspect of Apple that Reinhart had to get just right in order to ensure the audience always felt a connection to her was rooting Apple’s extreme qualities and actions into some sort of grounded truth. As Reinhart explained, “She has such a facade and wears such a mask. That’s why her wig and her hair were so important to me.” Throughout much of the movie, Apple is wearing that mask and “is not a grounded human being,” but when that facade starts to crack, there needs to be a degree of human truth underneath, and that’s something that’s hinted at via the reasons why Apple turns to witchcraft. Here’s how Reinhart put it:
“A betrayal from people who weren’t supposed to betray you. Blood should be thicker than water, and when it isn’t, how do you create your own family? And that’s why you can’t see her as a villain if you see where she’s coming from. You still can, but you have to see the person who’s struggling within her situation and what is happening to her to lead her to do what she does ultimately.”
The Fruits Are Intoxicating
“If I see my friend doing something wrong or bad, do I stop it, or do I join?”
The family Apple creates includes Alexandra Shipp’s Fig, a character Shipp describes as a loner who doesn’t want to be one anymore. “What she gets out of it is friendship.” Trouble is, that makes Fig especially susceptible to doing whatever is necessary in order to avoid losing those friends, even if it means abandoning her morals.
“In the film, she does say, ‘I don’t want to lose these girls as friends,’ and I think that that can be a really dangerous place to live in because you become so malleable, morally. And so I think that Fig kind of bends a lot of her morals and ideals for this group because she doesn’t want to be the outsider, [the] loner that she’s been her entire life up until this point. I think that her motivation is just like, ‘These women mean so much to me,” which is key. Every girl should feel that way about their friends, you know what I mean? Your friends are like your blood. They’re coursing through your veins. And yet, at the same time, Fig makes me ask the question of, ‘If I see my friend doing something wrong or bad, do I stop it, or do I join?’”
As for Lola Tung’s Pumpkin, she’s the new girl in town who’s embraced by The Fruits. As Tung explained, Pumpkin has loads of assumptions about the group and how they operate, but what winds up catching her off guard is “an unexpected sense of community.”
Tung considers Pumpkin to be the kind of person who is “friends with everybody, but kind of nobody at the same time.” She added, “I think she’s never felt a closeness and vulnerability like this.” Even when Forbidden Fruits veers into darker territory, The Fruits have a magnetizing quality. Tung explained:
“In certain moments, they talk about things that nobody else talks about, and they make you feel like you’re part of something special and unique. That building of the friendships makes it hurt all the more when things start to happen.”
The Dangers of Performative Sisterhood
Balancing the appeal of The Fruits and their disturbing dark side, and also the characters’ more extreme behaviors and their rawer moments calls for some tonal gymnastics. Alloway explained:
“I think that Forbidden Fruits, at its core, is sort of a satire. I hope that there’s humor. American Psycho is a big guiding light tonally because I think that everyone in the movie is taking their lives really seriously, and it can be kind of fun to laugh at it, but there are also extremely dark moments that feel very raw and real. You can experience that movie in so many different ways. And I think that with Fruits, we sort of took that as like, ‘Okay, let’s keep it playful.’ Ultimately, this should be a fun cinematic experience, but there are scenes that dig into the brutality of female relationships.”
Initially, Alloway and Houghton labeled this problematic form of friendship “girlboss ways,” but ultimately came to realize that Forbidden Fruits is tapping into something quite prevalent but far less explored on screen. Alloway recalled:
“We were sitting around the table, and we were like, ‘Performative sisterhood is more what’s going on here,’ and this sort of need to be accepted, and what we’ll do, anyone, to feel accepted and a part of something and a part of a family. And in this movie, I feel like if the women just really were like, ‘Are you okay? Because I’m not okay,’ none of the chaos would ensue.”
Forbidden Fruits is set to celebrate its World Premiere at SXSW 2026 on March 16 before opening in theaters on March 27.
- Director
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Meredith Alloway
- Writers
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Lily Houghton, Meredith Alloway
- Producers
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Mary Anne Waterhouse, Diablo Cody, Mason Novick