Jamie Lee Curtis is sharing some new insight into how Lindsay Lohan and Bader Shammas’ love story began.
Curtis, 66, gushed about reuniting with Lohan, 38, for the new movie Freakier Friday while chatting exclusively with Us Weekly at Amazon’s 2025 upfront presentation on Monday, May 12, during which she revealed how Lohan first met Shammas, 38.
“She met him right at the end of her time [in Dubai] on a blind date,” Curtis exclusively told Us. “So, it’s been a real pleasure for me to see her develop as a beautiful woman and [she’s] smart and gorgeous. I mean, it’s cray cray.”
Lohan — who famously starred alongside Curtis in the 2003 Disney film Freaky Friday — moved to Dubai in 2014 and was first connected to Shammas five years later. One year after she confirmed their romance, Lohan announced the couple’s engagement via Instagram in 2021 and the two tied the knot the following year. Lohan’s rep confirmed to Us in July 2023 that she had given birth to the pair’s son, Luai.
Not only did Lohan’s move to Dubai help her find love, but Curtis credits it with helping her costar rediscover her love of acting. “It’s been glorious to watch her become the mom she is and really loving her work,” Curtis gushed. “She took time off because she said it wasn’t fun anymore. She wasn’t enjoying it.”
She continued, “[Lindsay] went to Dubai because it was the one place she could go where it didn’t feel — she wasn’t bombarded. Weirdly enough, it was a very friendly country that left her alone. And she spent, if I’m not mistaken, like, five years there, and it was her starting to miss the creative work that brought her back.”
While Lohan found her happily ever after, Curtis’ own love life is still going strong, as she and her husband, Christopher Guest, celebrated 40 years of marriage last year. As for the secret to her long-lasting marriage, she told Us on Monday, “We just don’t leave.”
She explained, “It’s the oldest story in the book. It’s like a punchline to a joke. I’ve heard it said by many people before me. The secret to a long marriage is don’t leave it. And then, you wake up one day and you’re married a long time. We’re human. Life is hard for everybody, but it’s also gratifying to know that he’s there.”
In addition to her big screen reunion with Lohan, Curtis is also working with fellow Oscar winner Nicole Kidman on the upcoming TV series Scarpetta. “She heard that we were making Scarpetta, a show that I was producing, and she basically said, ‘I want to be Scarpetta,’” Curtis said of the show, based on the book series by Patricia Cornwell.
It was Kidman, 57, who also convinced Curtis to get out from behind the camera and act in the show as well.
“She said, ‘But you’re going to be in it with me, right?’ And then it was that moment of like, ‘Yes, Nicole Kidman. Yes, I am going to be in a show with you,’” Curtis told Us. “I had no choice. I was going to be a producer. And at that moment, it was decided that I was going to act in the show.”
Freakier Friday hits theaters on Friday, August 8.
