Rachel McAdams isn’t on a ton of red carpets these days (much to our chagrin), but when she is, she grabs attention. Case in point: her look at the Gotham Awards on Monday—a sheer black Givenchy gown with a statement keyhole cutout, featuring a high collar and long sleeves. In addition to her pair of emerald rings by Bulgari, Aquazzura heels, and dark nails, her Bulgari Serpenti necklace was a conversation starter.
The last time we saw McAdams on a red carpet was in April, when she attended the L.A. premiere of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret—a film which garnered her a Gotham Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance. She is getting Oscar buzz for her performance as Barbara in the film, adapted from the iconic Judy Blume novel of the same name.
McAdams dedicated her performance to her daughter, she told People; she found out she was pregnant when she signed on to the role. “It was all very fresh, and my hormones were probably raging,” she told the outlet. Already mom to a son, upon finding out she was having a daughter, she said she didn’t realize how happy the news would make her: “I didn’t know that I was secretly maybe yearning for that gift of getting to raise a girl and also how scary it is to think about raising a girl in this world,” McAdams said. “I think it’s all getting a lot better, and there’s room to grow—that’s why I’m so grateful for this movie. I think it’s a movie for everyone, but I also think it’s a really empowering movie for women, for young girls.”
Knowing she would soon be welcoming a girl into the world was “part of the reason I did it,” McAdams said. “I remember thinking, ‘I would love this to be in the world for her one day,’ because it’s hard for parents and kids to talk about stuff. That’s never going to go away. I think it’s getting better and easier, but there’s always that age gap. They have no idea what it’s like to be you and you’re fumbling in the dark. I feel like movies are a really gentle way to spark conversation. I feel like this is one of those and I just wanted to put that out there for her one day. We’ll see. She might never care about it at all,” she said, laughing.
The Gotham Awards come after McAdams’ absence from a Walmart commercial that reunited most of the Mean Girls cast, the star making 2004 film where McAdams played the villainous Regina George. The other three members of the Plastics—Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried—all signed on, but McAdams declined for a very simple reason: she didn’t want to do it. “It was definitely a loss not having Rachel there,” a source speaking to Page Six reports.
All hope isn’t lost, though—she told Bustle that she would be open to a return to the Mean Girls universe in some capacity. “If Tina [Fey, who starred in and wrote the film] can figure it out, I’m there, for sure,” she said.
