Although Jennifer Kaytin Robinson‘s I Know What You Did Last Summer brings back some familiar faces, don’t expect to see any reigning Croaker Queens.
The writer-director of the sequel, which premieres July 18 in theaters, recently admitted that she “tried relentlessly” to get her pal Sarah Michelle Gellar to reprise her role as the doomed Helen Shivers from the 1997 slasher pic, but “she’s dead.”
“I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead,” Robinson told Entertainment Weekly. “I tried to pitch some crazy s— too. I was like, ‘What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?’ And Sarah’s like, ‘I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but what if?’ And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’”
After Deadline reported the sequel was in the works in 2023, Gellar issued the same response about her potential return. “I am dead,” she told People.
“My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity,” added Gellar. “So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.”
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar in ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (1997) (Columbia/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Although Gellar will not return for the long-awaited update, she teased a photo from the set in November, where she joined close friend Robinson, as well as husband Freddie Prinze Jr., who reprises his role as Ray Bronson. She later admitted the photo got her “in a little bit of trouble.”
In addition to a quick glimpse of Gellar’s Helen in a framed photo on her grave, the first trailer for the movie that dropped Tuesday features the return of Prinze’s Ray and Jennifer Love Hewitt‘s final girl Julie James. The preview also reveals a first look at Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols, Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez.
Meanwhile, when asked if Brandy Norwood‘s surviving character Karla Wilson from the 1997 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer will return, Robinson said, “You’ll have to go see the movie.“
Content shared from deadline.com.