Freddie Prinze Jr. Unpacks (Spoilers) Scenes In ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer'
Now that the new version of I Know What You Did Last Summer is out in theaters, Freddie Prinze Jr. can finally talk about the legacy sequel's shocking twists and the film's big cameo appearance.
Also featuring the return of Jennifer Love Hewitt from the 1997 original film of the same name, I Know What You Did Last Summer opened in theaters nationwide on Friday.
The film follows a group of five friends — played by Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers and Sarah Pidgeon — who are targeted by a hook-wielding fisherman in the coastal town of Southport, N.C., after they covered up the accidental death of a motorist a year prior.
Since the gruesome deaths perpetrated by the mysterious, slick-wearing fisherman echo the circumstances surrounding Southport Massacre that Ray Bronson (Prinze) and Julie James (Hewitt) survived nearly three decades before, the friends seek out the help of the former couple.
The problem is, Ray and Julie — who went on to marry but are now are bitterly divorced — are reluctant to help the group ferret out the identity of the killer before he strikes again because of the trauma that they still carrry with them.
Note: The rest of the story reveals major spoilers from "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Sarah Pidgeon and Freddie Prinze Jr. in "I Know What You Did Last ... More Summer."
Prinze Says His Character's Twist Made It Easy For Him To Board 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'
In a Zoom conversation on Friday, Freddie Prinze Jr. revealed that he initially said no to the idea of reprising Ray Bronson for I Know What You Did Last Summer, but since the film's director — Do Revenge filmmaker Jennifer Kaytin Robinson — was a friend of his, he decided to hear her plans for a potential new film featuring his legacy character.
As it turns out, Robinson had a twist in store for Ray that Prinze immediately embraced — she made the one of the heroes of the original story one of new film's villains.
To start, Prinze said he was intrigued by the different ways Robinson made Ray and Julie deal with the trauma they suffered after surviving the wrath of the fisherman killer nearly 30 years before. While Julie approached it from a healthy standpoint, Ray coped with the trauma led him down a very dark path that rears its ugly head as both he and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) are revealed in the third act to be the killers wreaking havoc in Southport.
As it turns out, the person who died in the accident that the friend group caused was a close friend of Stevie's. As such, it made Stevie and Ray crack at the same time because Ray had promised to watch over Stevie after her father died. Effectively, witnessing Stevie's trauma over losing her friend was too much for either of them to bear.
'Jennifer started talking about that trauma path and how it's going to break his psyche and he's going to be a broken man,' Prinze said. 'He hasn't dealt with it the way Julie has. He's run away from it and has refused to deal with it in the past 27 years, and the pressure in the prison [of his mind began to build up].
'So, when the same thing happens to Stevie — who he happens to love and care about like a daughter, almost — because of the empathy that he had for Stevie, it made it much more justifiable for Ray to cross a line that you can't uncross,' Prinze added.
Ironically, Prinze said he wasn't present and wearing the fisherman's slicker for Ray's kill scenes in I Know What You Did Last Summer. In retrospect, he feels it was a good move to shoot any scenes of him in the iconic outfit during filming because it virtually eliminated the chances of the shocking plot twist being leaked.
'They shot [the kill scenes] without me when I was still in America and they were filming in Australia,' Prinze said. 'I only wore it when they had me try it on to get sizes, so that we would find somebody that was the same size as me so would fit them the same way.
'It was one of the more challenging things in the movie, to be honest, to find somebody with the same body type as me, Prinze added. "After that, Jen discussed with me which kills were mine and which kills were Sarah's throughout the script.'
About That Big Cameo In 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'
While the public has been led to believe that Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt were the only two characters from the original I Know What You Did Last Summer to return for the new film, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson had figured out a creative way to bring another key character who died in the 1997 film.
The fun part about bringing back the character, Helen Shivers, for a nightmarish dream sequence is that the star who played her, Sarah Michelle Gellar, is also Prinze's longtime wife. It provided the couple with a plausible way of downplaying any rumors of a cameo when she posted photos of her visiting her husband in Australia during production.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. at the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" Los Angeles ... More Premiere held at The United Theater on Broadway on July 14, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images)
As such, Prinze said nobody knew about the cameo from day one of the production, except for him, Gellar, Robinson, her co-screenwriter, Sam Lansky and later on, select people at the studio. None of the cast members were even told about the cameo, Prinze noted, with the exception of Madelyn Cline — who shares the scene with Gellar — but even she didn't find out about the scene until later in the production.
'It was really under wraps so that nobody would know, so there was no chance for it to get out and I was so excited about it,' Prinze said.
What made the scene even more thrilling for Prinze to experience was that when Gellar recently attended the premiere of the film with him, the general feeling was that she was there to support her husband's new film. Little did people at the premiere know that Gellar was in the film, too, and Prinze's character's storyline was about to take a shocking turn.
'It was pretty exciting to know those two secrets and to have kept them for so long, so to get honest, genuine responses from people is a really rewarding experience,' Prinze enthused. 'People didn't recognize her at first since it's a silhouette of her from the back.
"When she turned, the whole crowd in the 1,100-seat theater we were in went bananas … they genuinely love Sarah and they genuinely love that character, and I thought it was so smart that Jen put that scene in there,' Prinze added.
Rated R, I Know What You Did Last Summer is new in theaters.
Note: Some quotes in this interview were condensed or edited for clarity.
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