Jennifer Love Hewitt opened up about how she also took part in planning her character Julie James in the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel.
In a recent chat with Variety, the 48-year-old actress gushed over how she helped to redefine her role, too, as she reprised Julie James almost 30 years later.
Hewitt noted that she brought her experience and insights to make Julie’s return in the horror movie feel like a real and meaningful one.
In the original 1997 film, Julie was a scared teenager, but now in the latest sequel, she is a trauma professor who has survived not just killers but also a painful divorce from Ray Bronson.
The creative team took suggestions from Hewitt on how her ’90s role would be today after 27 years.
“They allowed space for me to know her better than anyone, which was so kind because they didn’t have to do that,” Hewitt told the outlet.
“I felt very seen as somebody who had created her the first time,” she gushed.
“It would’ve been very, very easy to make an all-new ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ and put a line in there about Julie James and a line about Ray, and that could’ve been it. But the audience didn’t want us to be forgotten. And they didn’t want Brandy’s character Karla, to be forgotten. They wanted us to come back, and so we’re here,” she explained.
Moreover, she also noted that leading a horror movie in her late 40s is a powerful message for young girls.
“It is showing young girls out there that we get older and you can’t count us out,” she said, adding, “The women in these horror movies that are coming back are strong. And they mean something in this world.”
