Jennifer Love Hewitt Spills the Tea: Why Returning to ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Was More Thrilling Than a Mercury Retrograde!
Added on June 19, 2025 inEntertainment News Cards, Movie News Cards
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Is your inner Scorpio ready to dive back into secrets, shadows, and those ever-haunting skeletons in the closet? Because just as Pluto retrogrades demand we confront what’s lurking beneath, the beloved cult classic slasher franchise I Know What You Did Last Summer is resurfacing, darker and more twisted than ever. Set to sail into theaters this July 18th, the new sequel promises to plunge us into the murky waters of guilt, revenge, and a “Fisherman” killer with a vendetta — all while weaving in the digital age’s obsession with fame and the loss of secrets. Jennifer Love Hewitt returns as a more battle-worn Julie James — now a sharp-edged professor wrestling with trauma — alongside Freddie Prinze Jr., both stepping up to mentor a fresh cast facing horrors past and present. If your Moon is stirring up nostalgic chills, you won’t want to miss this spooky reboot that asks: Who really knows what you did last summer… and why? LEARN MORE
There’s a new sequel to the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer (watch it HERE) and its 1998 follow-up I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (watch that one HERE) coming our way from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge), aiming for a July 18 theatrical release. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who played heroine Julie James in the first two films, and Freddie Prinze Jr., who was Julie’s boyfriend Ray Bronson in those films, are reprising their roles – and they’re going to be facing off with a new “Fisherman” killer that’s stalking a whole new cast. ExtraTV caught up with Hewitt on the set of the film, where she told them it felt it was “really so cool” that she was given the chance to come back for another I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel and that fans look forward to seeing her in the movie.
Robinson directed the film from a screenplay by Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.), which has received some rewrites from Robinson and journalist Sam Lansky. McKendrick told Collider a while back that the new sequel will reckon with “some big ideas about hero and villain, right and wrong, how your skeletons come back to haunt you. And in the age of the internet and the age where fame is such a revered concept, the creation of TikTok and social media, who is Julie James in a world where there are no secrets anymore?” McKendrick also said that when she went in to pitch her take to Sony, the most important things they wanted to hear about were “the accident, the event that kicks it off, and who the killer is.“
Here’s the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel’s synopsis: When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer… and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help. As you can tell from the synopsis, Hewitt and Prinze are not the leads this time around. They’re joined in the cast by Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer), model / musician Gabbriette Bechtel (making her feature film acting debut), Austin Nichols (The Day After Tomorrow), Lola Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty), and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story).
Asked what her character Julie James is like in the new sequel, Hewitt told ExtraTV, “She’s very different. I think you’ll see shades of that girl (she was before) because I want those to be in there, but she’s lived-in. She’s in her forties. She has carried this a long time. She’s a professor in the mind and trauma and PTSD field, so I think she’s figured out a way to put herself in a position in her life that she can deal every day with what happened to her in her teens. She’s a little edgier, she’s funny in this movie, which I really appreciate. I think you just see that she’s lived in this person for a while.” As for what it was like to play the character again after so long, “It was crazy. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as anxious or panicky a night before working in 36 years as I was before stepping back on this set.“
What would she say to the fans who are excited to see her in the film? “A big fat thank you, thank you, it’s really so cool. I do think that you get to a certain age and you wonder if you’re going to be forgotten about a little bit and I feel really seen and not forgotten and I think that’s really special – it’s gonna make me cry – but I think it’s really special for people to remind you of that. I’ve only been able to do what I love because people still care about it. It’s not lost on me, I think about that a lot, I have real gratitude for that. It’s cool for my kids, they think I’m so cool right now, and I can’t thank you guys enough for that. You’ve given me Cool Mom points. And I hope everybody loves her and who she’s become, I do. I’m really proud of this version of her and I hope everybody is.” Hewitt isn’t just excited for herself, but for her fellow old school final girls who are also coming back for legacy sequels. “I’m so psyched for Neve (Campbell) and all the people in these franchises who are coming back and doing these things. It’s really cool. Jamie Lee Curtis paved the way for all of us to be able to do 119 of these and continue doing them into our sixties and still be badasses. She deserves all the credit, it’s so cool, and the rest of us just get to follow, I think it’s neat.“
Are you looking forward to seeing Jennifer Love Hewitt in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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