What did you do last summer? Well, this summer, I spoke with I Know What You Did Last Summer director/co-writer/executive producer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson as well as cast members Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers, Jonah Hauer-King, and Freddie Prinze Jr.! The film is now playing in theaters, and these conversations will contain MAJOR spoilers.

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.

With this being a legacy sequel, fans were thrilled to find out that Prinze, who starred as Ray Bronson in the original 1997 film and 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, would be returning. However, many will be shocked to discover that he is actually one of the killers this time around. “I did not see this as a part of his future,” the actor told me. “The opportunity to be the killer is great, but if the reason why isn’t truthful, if it’s not organic, then people are going to really hate it and his reason why, and more importantly, how he got to where he got is the reason I did the movie. It was a chance to play a broken man. He may not look broken from the exterior, but on the inside, he has not talked about this. He has repressed this, and he’s seen the Julie James character not just survive but thrive in the face of this trauma because she did deal with it.”

He continued to say, “She teaches people how to deal with trauma, she’s so good at it and as far forward as she’s moving, that’s how far backwards he is, and that’s not fair, and that’s the kind of stuff that breaks men when they start looking at the world as unfair. And it gave me a lot of room to find trauma and to bring that up, whether it was stuff in my own life or stuff from other people that I’ve known, and an opportunity to try and break people’s hearts in that final moment because they should be broken. I hope people are upset the way they were upset when Helen Shivers died because they thought she was going to be a final girl. I want hearts broken, and I committed everything into that performance to make sure that that happened. So that was my goal, and I hope we succeeded with it.”

There are plenty of fun easter eggs throughout the movie that audiences will pick up on and love, but Sarah Michelle Gellar’s cameo is a definite highlight. “What I love about it, one, first of all, point blank, period, Sarah Michelle Gellar — that tops everything for me, but my second favorite part about the way it was orchestrated is that Helen is Danica’s blueprint. Helen is revered by Danica, you know what I mean? Helen is the Croaker Queen, and she has this moment in this dream where Helen comes to her and it’s not this like, little diva kiki moment that Danica would probably imagine it to be,” Cline, who plays Danica Richards, expressed. “It’s actually a really terrifying, ominous warning, and I love the contrast between Danica’s expectation and reality that, you know, I think Danica thinks that if her and Helen were to get together, they’d be girlies and they’re not, they’re actually really not.”

Pidgeon is making her mark on the franchise as Stevie Ward, who is the second half of our killing duo. She calls Prinze “an icon” before sharing, “I was really excited for that big monologue where she, I was gonna say, exposes herself, which I guess she does, but it’s also nerve-wracking to do that. I think the hardest part and what was most gratifying was pretending that I knew nothing about what was going on in the moments when you are on screen with Freddie and knowing that they’re in cahoots with each other, and sort of, yeah, playing at that secret, or what they want outsiders to know or not want outsiders to know. But it was so cool to be able to do this installment of the movie with Freddie, who really came back around and just has such an incredible character arc, especially for fans of the original movie. So it was really awesome to play his sidekick and kill some people.”

Our post-credits scene is an epic reunion between Jennifer Love Hewitt, who reprises her role as Julie James, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer’s Brandy as Karla Wilson. This, along with the fact that Danica, Stevie, and Ava all survive, offers plenty of paths for another installment.

Robinson confirmed that she is “for sure” interested in continuing the story. As for why this franchise still has such an engaging fanbase after all these years, she explained, “I mean, I think that it’s a movie about people making mistakes and the guilt, and the shame, and being haunted by that and being hunted for that, and that’s kind of an evergreen thing. Like, any person can mess up, and then your whole life is different in an instant. And so, that, I think, is something that is evergreen, and it’s like, that wound, which is the wound of our young cast, which is the wound of our returning cast, is the same. And so, telling that story was really fun. It was really fun to kind of get in there and see how we could kind of play around in that space and tell a story that really is about trauma and really is about dealing with something very, very real, but presenting it in kind of this genre, popcorn, big, cinematic experience.”

Wonders’ Ava Brucks will no doubt be a new favorite final girl for horror fans. So, when it came to exploring all of the tropes that the genre includes, which was her favorite? “Her darkness. I think that is something that there are hints of in the original movie of Julie James and how she experiences trauma, but I feel like Jenn crafted such a good character. We always talked about how, I mean, when we get into the steamy scene with Ava and Milo, she has some preferences that are clear trauma responses and gets kink-shamed. So that’s an interesting aspect and not one you see every day,” the actress pointed out. “Basically, I think it is interesting that it’s very multidimensional, her response to this trauma and the ways in which she shoves it all down, and how it kind of rears its ugly head. It was also fun to play an all-American girl because a lot of times Scream Queens are white and I’m not, and that felt really special and cool to me.”

Sadly, Hauer-King’s Milo Griffin and Withers’ Teddy Spencer are both murdered before the credits roll, which also means that they never find out the identities of their killers. How would they have reacted?

“I would have been pretty surprised. I think Freddie, both on and off screen, brings a pretty gentlemanly, father-like, nurturing energy, less murderous than others. So I think that would have been surprising,” Hauer-King commented. “He’s super fond of Stevie, and they go way back, I think he would have been as perplexed as the rest of them.”

Withers added, “If Teddy were to get the reveal, I think he would have just been understanding, in a weird way, because I think there’s some backstory between Stevie and Teddy. I think Teddy is kind of… he feels sorry for the way their friendship ended up, and I think it would have been an emotional reveal, and I think he just would have given in to whatever it was. And for Freddie, Ray, I think it would have still made sense because I think he had a certain love for the town, which my father didn’t. He just had a love for elevating the town in a specific way. But yeah, I think Teddy, he would have fought back, but it would have been more emotional, especially with Stevie.”

We discussed those shocking ending reveals, the possibility of a sequel, why the franchise continues to be so beloved, surprise cameos, and more.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer is in theaters now.