Jennifer Love Hewitt Gives Promising Update on ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Sequel (Exclusive)
Sony Pictures’ I Know What You Did Last Summer recently cast a batch of newcomers to its sequel, which already included Chase Sui Wonders and Freddie Prinze Jr. set to reprise his role. But the studio has yet to confirm whether OG star Jennifer Love Hewitt, who has been in talks to return for a while now, is going to be back as well.
Parade put the question to Hewitt herself last week, when the actress was on hand to promote a new partnership with Ferrero Rocher. “We're so close, that's all I'm gonna say,” she told Parade in an exclusive interview. “I feel like the actual audience now is like, 'What are you waiting for, huh?'" she added, referencing her famous line from the original movie.
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Not surprisingly, the holdup is in part related to scheduling. “It's such a delicate thing, because we're trying to deal with the 9-1-1 schedule and the movie schedule, so we're just trying to figure it out and make it happen," Hewitt said.
Above all, she wants to make sure that if she returns, she has enough of a role for her comeback to be satisfying to fans.
"If I'm going to come back 27 years later, I don't want to just be in it for five seconds, like, I don't want it to just be like that thing that's like, 'Oh, well, there's the ghost of I Know What You Did past, here she is,'" she told Parade. "So I want to be able to carve out time to really be in it for people and to have it matter. So we're working on it. We're so close. The announcement will be so exciting when it happens, for me as well, and I'm hoping it's soon.”
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Freddie Prinze Jr.'s reprisal was confirmed back in September, despite him having described his experience on the original movie as "miserable." According to the '90s heartthrob, director Jim Gillespie never wanted to cast him in the movie in the first place (he wanted to hire Jeremy Sisto), and he took it out on the young actor.
“There was no passive aggressiveness—which I hate—he was very direct in the fact that, ‘I don’t want you in this movie,’" Prinze told Too Fab. "So when that’s your first job and you hear those words, it just wrecks you, man. It just wrecks you.”
According to Prinze, Gillespie would often give him cruel notes or ignore him altogether.
“It was very difficult waking up in the morning—or in the afternoon, because we shot a lot of nights—and go to work with the right attitude,” he said. “...He made it a point to single me out every time, would bring the other actors together without me, and give them all notes. And I’m like, well was he just trying to do some method crap? I just don’t understand.”
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For her part, Hewitt told Parade that she "wasn't aware that Prinze had a bad experience."
"I thought we all had a great experience," she said. "I know for me, it was great. I loved being there. I felt so lucky to be 18 and be in a movie and get to do what I love and have that experience."
Regardless, she said, "[Prinze] seems fine now because he's back and that's great. And, yeah, it wasn't my experience. I had a great time. And it has a very special place in my heart."