Jaquel Spivey as Damian, Angourie Rice as Cady and Auli’i Cravalho as Janis in “Mean Girls.".Photo:Jojo Whilden/Paramount

Jaquel Spivey plays Damian, Angourie Rice plays Cady and Auli’i Cravalho plays Janis in Mean Girls from Paramount Pictures.

Jojo Whilden/Paramount

Auli’i Cravalhoand Jaquel Spivey have learned how to take onmeanpeople.

Cravalho, 23, and Spivey, 25, tell PEOPLE the ways they’ve learned to treat bullies in the real world.

“Sometimes it’s important to … throw it back, see what happens. Other times, maybe it is better to have a Burn Book where you write down your feelings instead of saying them out loud,” says Cravalho, also the voice ofDisney’sMoana.

Spivey, who’s in his first movie role after breaking out in Broadway’sA Strange Loop, adds, “Sometimes it just feels good to say, ‘Shut your ass up,’ you know? Sometimes it just needs to happen.”

Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey on Dec. 4, 2023.Vivien Killilea/Getty

Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey attend a “Mean Girls” photocall at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on December 04, 2023, in Los Angeles, California.

Vivien Killilea/Getty

“So,” says Spivey, “I’m very good at blocking out the noise.”

Their costars who portray the Plastics —Reneé Rapp, Bebe Wood and Avantika — have also developed approaches to handling meanies.

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From left: Angourie Rice, Avantika, Bebe Wood, Renee Rapp.Myriam Santos for Paramount Pictures

Avantika, Angourie Rice, Renee Rapp and Bebe Wood

Myriam Santos for Paramount Pictures

“It’s important to remind yourself that what these people say are their opinions. You get to decide what you make a fact, and you hold that control in your power,” says Avantika, 18. Wood, 22, adds, “I love RuPaul’s, ‘If they’re not paying your rent, pay them no mind.’ That’s my mantra.”

Rapp, meanwhile, is still learning. “I actually don’t know how I deal with it. I would like to think I try hard to have a lot of empathy. However, you get burned badly enough, you start to get sensitive and edgy. I’m going through a whole thing where I’m like, ‘I need to figure out how I deal with mean people.’ "

“Which,” the singer, 24, adds, “is not to say that I myself don’t have the capacity to be mean or I’m exempt from a really mean thing I did when I was a kid, because I’m sure I was doing some crazy s—. Like, IknowI was!”

Angourie Rice, the Australian actress who plays Cady Heron, has a low tolerance for not-nice individuals.

“I can’t deal with mean people, I just cry,” says the star, 23. “It’s hard because logically you understand when people are mean it’s because it’s their problem. It’s not to do with you. Emotionally, things still hurt.”

Mean Girlsis in theaters now.

source: people.com