written by NICOLAIA RIPS
photography TYRELL HAMPTON
styling DANIEL GAINES
Sarah Michelle Gellar screaming her head off while wearing a massive bejeweled pink crown, a greasy haired Jennifer Love Hewitt going full emo mode, Ryan Phillippe at his absolute douchiest, and Freddie Prinze Jr. being Freddie Prinze Jr. When the 1997 slasher movie I Know What You Did Last Summer came out, it immediately joined the ranks of essential horror films, revamped the ’80s slasher genre, and kicked off a cottage industry of spoofs. More important than its campiness and hook-handed villainy, was the casting: a who’s who of the brightest up-and-coming actors in Hollywood, all propelled by the film to full star status.
Now, 28 years later, the sleepy coastal town of Southport, South Carolina is being terrorized. The sequel to the original, also called I Know What You Did Last Summer, has nailed the casting yet again, tapping the hottest of young Hollywood: Chase Sui Wonders (The Studio), Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), and Gabbriette Bechtel (Gabbriette!). Once again, it’s a must watch, a fun romp that asks: What’s scarier—a man chasing you with a hook or your own demons?
This version revels in the complications of young adulthood—that spiritually gluey moment where you’re outgrowing the childhood version of yourself. How do you reconcile your past with your present? Are you doomed to drift away from all the friends that remind you of who you used to be—or, in the case of IKWYDLS, remind you of someone you murdered?
Co-stars Chase Sui Wonders and Sarah Pidgeon are no strangers to navigating childhood friendship and shared trauma. The childhood besties got their start together in Michigan community theater, where tensions were high and hormones higher. In IKWYDLS it feels like there’s an invisible thread connecting the girls. They move in tandem. In person the girls are just as electric, in turns ribbing and uplifting each other, the way only someone who’s seen you at age 16 play a plate in Beauty and The Beast can.
In high school, Sarah left Detroit to attend Interlochen, Michigan’s prestigious pre-professional arts boarding school whose alumni include everyone from Ed Helms to Sufjan Stevens. Recently, she nabbed a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play starring as the fragile and floundering singer Diana in broadway musical Stereophonic, which currently holds the record for most Tony-nominated play of all time. Sarah, with her big blue eyes and shiny dark hair, feels like she emerged from the world of Tim Burton. She’s extremely subtle, all graceful gestures and little quips. Currently, she’s set to play style-icon Caroline Bessette-Kennedy in Ryan Murphy’s much-talked-about TV show American Love Story.
I met Chase Sui Wonders for the first time several years ago at “Seinfeld Night” at a Brooklyn Cyclones game, an outing organized by a mutual friend. In the time I’ve known her (unlike the Brooklyn Cyclones) Chase has been on an absolute hitting streak: appearing in YA show Generation, slasher-satire Bodies Bodies Bodies, and, right now, hit-comedy The Studio. Beyond being a card carrying scream queen and a complete stunner, Chase is also hysterical, capable of slapstick physicality and countless impressions that she’s not shy at whipping out. She takes genuine delight from experiences both humiliating and elevating, and could have chemistry with a fig newton.
The three of us met on a sunny Saturday afternoon at The Marlton Hotel in New York, where we were faux ID’ed by a waiter —we were only drinking Arnold Palmers!—who we decided was father, not daddy. Over that pitcher of Palmers, we gabbed about what it takes to be a final girl (no spoilers, I promise), navigating the hard scrabble world of community theater, and calling Freddie Prinze Jr. daddy—not father.
Nicolaia Rips: Tell me the friendship meet-cute.
Chase Sui Wonders: Let me paint a picture: community theater in the suburbs of Detroit. Not a very talented bunch.
Sarah Pidgeon: We can’t knock our roots! There’s a lot of kids from a lot of different schools, it’s a big age range, 7-year olds to seniors in high school.
CSW: The first play we did was Beauty and the Beast.
SP: I was Cogsworth and you were the plate.
CSW: Right… and this is where it gets juicy. I had been in the chorus for several plays, I was forgettable as a card in Alice in Wonderland, I was in High School Musical. And then Willy Wonka. Sarah gets Violent Beauregarde. I get Veruca Salt. I’m like, “I made it.” Our stars were on the rise.
SP: We were there all the time, sharing the stage, and the spotlight.
CSW: We were buds.
SP: I remember your house so well.
CSW: I remember Sarah’s mom’s Toyota Prius. But then, the schism.
SP: There was no schism. We didn’t have a schism. You’re telling this story wrong.
CSW: In my heart there was a schism because Sarah continued to rise in the ranks of community theater and I started to get demoted. Performance weekend of Willy Wonka I had strep throat. I did bad. In Aladdin I had one-line. “Thief, thief! Someone stole my bread!”
SP: We got older. I went away for high school and we stopped doing community theater.
CSW: I remember stalking Sarah’s Facebook, seeing her photos at Interlochen, and being like, “Oh My God, she’s so cool.”
How did you reconnect?
SP: We were in these two YA shows around the same time. I was in The Wilds, and Chase was in Generation. There was a similar fandom. Someone asked Chase if she’d seen The Wilds, and she was like “Yeah, actually Sarah Pigeon, my fr—this girl I know.”
CSW: I didn’t want to be creepy and stake claim to a fallen friendship?!
SP: I had been claiming you as a friend for years when we were not on speaking terms.
CSW: Then, me and my whole family went to see Stereophonic which was amazing, and I was like my friend Sarah Pigeon is in this. We went backstage after the show and then two weeks later, I got the part [in IKWYDLS].
SP: Our director was like, Chase Sui Wonders is gonna play Ava, and I was like, “Oh my God, I know her. She’s my friend.”
CSW: Then we were in Australia. We had tea in our room, and we just talked. We ended up sharing a room later!
“I really trust Sarah acting-wise and intellectually. She’s a smart cookie.”
Chase Sui Wonders
Any fun stories from set?
SP: You called Freddie Prinze Jr. daddy.
CSW: I accidentally called him daddy.
SP: We were shooting some pickup in LA, and we were all outside in Long Beach and Freddie was there, and we were talking about all the iconic movie roles that he’d done. And Chase was like, my favorite in Scooby Doo is when you became Daphne…
CSW: “I can look at myself naked.” I did that impression for Freddie Prinze Jr. He was like, “That was pretty good!” And then, I was talking about how my dad is a huge fan of Summer Catch which is a baseball movie Freddie Prinze Jr. did—and somebody asked what happens in it? I said, “When, daddy in the movie…when dad…”I don’t think I’ve ever felt so embarrassed, he played it off though and everybody started laughing. But for a second I was like no, no, no…
The Scooby Doo movie is an essential watch! It’s also 100% a horror movie. What are your favorite horror movies?
SP: I like the Saw movies. I like Final Destination. I could only watch TV on the weekends, so I would stay up in the dark with my dog watching Saw.
CSW: I couldn’t do horror movies in my youth, I was such a scaredy cat. A lot of movies made me feel really ill. I took all the emotions literally. The Fifth Element is not a horror movie, but I remember being so scared of it, the aliens and Bruce Willis. All those action movies about defeating bad guys were horror to me, it just felt so high stakes and so scary.
I got to see the first thirty minutes of the movie, and—without giving any spoilers—I feel like your friendship journey mimics the one your characters go on.
[We get our second round of Arnold Palmers from our waiter, who is now looking very silver fox.]
CSW: He’s getting more daddy by the second! [During filming] we were also living together and oftentimes we’d read our scenes together. I really trust Sarah acting-wise and intellectually. She’s a smart cookie. We’d talk about character motivations. Everything had a touchstone in our youth, like this is the girl that shops at this place, or goes to this school. Also, I feel like both of our characters are a bit of the moral compasses of the movie. They provide grounding.
Did you go to your high school reunion?
CSW: I went to my 10 year anniversary. It was crazy. Everyone was just much nicer. I feel like all the high school dynamics faded away and everyone was just chatting with each other.
SP: I feel like the 15 year one is when it gets awkward. People get married and have kids!
“In IKWYDLS the stakes are so huge that it allows for more things to exist within it.”
Sarah PIDGEON
Do you have any tips for surviving a horror movie?
CSW: Stay together. Never be alone with one other person. I think the key is three. Wear shoes you can run in. Ava wears heels the whole way through… They’re Justine Clenquet. Actress’ own.
You put yourself in heels?
CSW: Yes, I put myself in heels. Well, the wardrobe in the OG is so iconic, it had to be cute!
SP: There’s been a few moments in my life where I have suffered actual fear, like I’m in a horror movie, and I realized that I am terrible in those high stress situations. I get crazy and stunned. I feel like Chase, though, could get away with murder.
CSW: I’ve outrun a perpetrator before. I got mugged while I was in college, and I outran him. I had my laptop in my backpack. He had a razor blade type of thing. I did a spin trick around him, and ran.
Beyond IKWYDLS, you’re both leading other incredible projects. Tell me about American Love Story and The Studio.
SP: We’re just getting started [on American Love Story]. But it’s been really exciting.
CSW: The Studio—wow, it’s just like a cast of clowns, and I am happy that I am a part of it. They’re all just such comedy legends
SP: She’s totally holds her own. It was funny making IKWYDLS, because she’s funny, and she’s quick, and she’s got such a great sense of humor, and you try to make Ava as funny as possible, but obviously she’s the moral center. Then watching The Studio, Chase just lets the freak flag.
Do you feel like horror and comedy are similar?
CSW: They’re both kind of carnal. They definitely feel like their own genre of acting in that there’s this live wire. In comedy that’s finding the joke in every scene. It’s stressful.
SP: Because it could all fail, especially because the shots are so crazy. Lots of long shots or one-shot wonders. What’s cool about horror is that there are so many genres inside of it. There can be romance, there can be horror or comedy. There’s drama. I think especially for IKWYDLS, it’s about the big kills, but within that, there’s so much opportunity to have character development and laughs. The stakes are so huge that it allows for more things to exist within it, versus, some genres of film that are played really close to the chest and are very intimate.
IKWYDLS is also all about the guilt.
CSW: It’s really about the trauma.
SP: It’s about the trauma.
CSW: Have you seen that super cut of Jamie Lee Curtis promoting a movie, and she says trauma like drama?
No, but speaking of memes, have you guys seen that meme that’s like, “Killing myself in front of you and changing the trajectory of your friendship forever?”
CSW: That’s basically I Know What You Did Last Summer.
SP: This is so unrelated, but also about memes. But apparently the new, Pope Leo is related to a bunch of celebrities. He has a distant relation to Madonna, another Detroiter.
Who are other famous Detroiters?
SP: Bob Seger. MC5, Eminem, Mike Posner. I saw this quote tweet that was like, “Pope Leo, nepo baby, because Madonna wrote ‘Like a Prayer.’” I found it funny, it tickled me. But like, he is a nepo baby, in that he’s a child of God.
CSW: Wow, every pope is a nepo baby…
hair EDWARD LAMPLEY USING ORIBE AT CLM AGENCY
makeup KENNEDY USING MAC COSMETICS AT STREETERS
nails NORI USING CHANEL LE VERNIS AT SEE MANAGEMENT
photography assistant SAWYER MICHAELS
styling assistants ASHLEY WEILER & SONIA ALIPIO
hair assistant ASHLEY MALCOLM
makeup assistant NIKO JANE ZUCCHERO
production THE MORRISON GROUP
production assistants CASEY HUSSEY & MAIAN TRAN
post production PICTUREHOUSE & THESMALLDARKROOM
location PARAGON