The meme circulated the internet rapidly early last year: Actress, and beloved big-screen queen of the Aughts, also remembered by a generation as a tabloid magazine fixture, Lindsay Lohan, happily dancing on a beach, celebrating her latest business venture: the debut of her beach club located in Mykonos, Greece.
Some may have viewed Lohan's venture as a comeback, or yet another attempt to shed her party-girl past and persuade the public to view her in a different light. Regardless of the public's reception of her past attempt's to redeem her public image, (Lohan's highly-anticipated docu-series made in collaboration with Oprah, failed to match the preshow buzz ratings-wise, in 2013), Lohan wasn't finished trying to persuade the public to listen while she attempted to take back her narrative from her headline-making past, and utilize a path she previously traveled before.
With her second venture into reality television, she was determined to use a central component of the beloved TV genre; Lohan wanted to show off a side to herself the public seemed to constantly ignore: her actual, real-life reality. This time, she was going to make it profitable but with a pretty beach background.
The Beauty Goes To The Beach: Inside Lohan's Sunny Business
By 2019, it had been seven years since Lohan had a starring role as the lead in a film. Even then, her role in the made-for-TV biopic of Elizabeth Taylor's life, Liz And Dick, seemed to keep Lohan in the mind frame of a fallen public figure, whether purposefully intentional or not.
The hypothetical idea of Lohan being eternally typecast into a certain category of celebrity could perhaps serve as even more motivation - she was capable of much more than precociously playing roles in remakes of beloved Disney films.
The idea of Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club was to follow Lohan as she took charge of opening and operating her own luxurious beach club. Instead of serving as the sole focus of the endeavor, Lohan would be joined by members of her staff and show their daily lives as they attempted to capture Lohan's vision of beach bliss, while also working under her and navigating a world where Lohan was their boss. After all, the show's theme song was Lohan's 2008 club-friendly banger Bossy, what kind of formula for both reality TV domination while making an effort to reshape the public's view could be more successful?
Ratings Gone Awry: An Unexpected Failure
As it turns out, the idea of depicting Lindsay Lohan as a business-minded brainchild behind a metaphorical success did little to boost her brand. Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club was canceled just as quickly as it began. After twelve episodes aired on MTV and completing its first season in March 2019, the series ceased airing new episodes. Not only did Lohan's reality show not survive to see another Summer season, but the club also closed its doors as well.
The one-two punch of Lohan's losses in Mykonos was based on a common demonstrator the actress was well-too-familiar with. Despite several situations where Lohan unveiled her serious side while letting viewers receive a glimpse behind-the-scenes of what went on behind closed doors, the show was said to have failed to serve the desired amounts of drama on an upscale silver platter viewers desired.
Behind-the-scenes, however, plenty of drama sealed the club's demise, once cameras were turned off.
In hindsight, the fate of the actual resort could be perceived as a metaphor for the whole concept of Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club: A seemingly beautiful idea with lots of promise but would meet an unexpected fate.
The actual Mykonos location quickly emptied out and soon became a shell of its former self; According to Refinery29, it was soon impossible to find anyone to answer the phone at the beach club, due to the beach club suddenly being abandoned, taking a sudden mysterious tone!
Unanswered phone calls were just the beginning of the mysterious saga of Lohan's beach club. The aftermath of Lohan's beach club was also met with a glaring reality: Lohan's involvement in the beach club's decline remains unknown. Once the show was canceled, Lohan remains mum on the matter, as well as what exactly happened with the resort itself. A full year after the show aired, the building shows no trace of Lohan's name associated with it. According to Paper Magazine via Page Six, the club's sign which once let the world know who owned the resort is no longer; the sign is "Stripped off."
Despite the fact Lohan has never spoken on the matter publicly, followers of Lohan's beach saga have weighed in on the matter. Anyone seeking to book a stay at the beach club would be out of luck; not only did the staff fail to answer the phone, but they would also be unreachable via email. There would be lots of questions to include in this email; the club was said to be open for business in the Summer of 2019, but, as a fan revealed to Refinery29, "We drove past, and it's literally beat."
The famous clip of Lohan grooving on the beach now can be seen as a fossil from pop culture's past. If one wanted to apply sort of an existential angle to the situation, the sequence could be perceived as Lohan moving from project-to-project, an element of reality that may be too monotonous for reality TV cameras to capture!