No, Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t returning this summer for the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot. Why? Because her iconic character Helen Shivers is “the most dead a person could be.” To be fair, she did have the most memorable kill scene in the 1997 original film…
But that didn’t stop “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson from gently “harassing” Gellar to reconsider returning to the franchise. Robinson previously worked with Gellar on the 2022 Netflix film “Do Revenge,” and the duo have remained close since.
Robinson told Entertainment Weekly that, while original franchise stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. are returning for the horror sequel, Gellar had to turn down reprising her role. “I tried, OK? I harassed her! But she is dead,” Robinson told the outlet. “I tried to pitch some crazy shit too. I was like, ‘What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?’ And Sarah’s like, ‘I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but what if?’ And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’”
Gellar previously confirmed to People that she would not be in the reboot. Instead, she will serve as a franchise expert in an “unofficial” capacity. “My best friend [Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity,” Gellar said. “So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.”
Meanwhile, Gellar will be starring in another horror franchise, as she was recently announced as part of the cast of the “Ready or Not: Here I Come” sequel, along with Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Elijah Wood, and auteur David Cronenberg.
The upcoming “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot stars Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Lola Tung, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Austin Nichols, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers, Jonah Hauer-King, Billy Campbell, and Gabbriette.
The official synopsis for the film reads: “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.”
Robinson told IndieWire in 2022 that collaborating with Gellar on “Do Revenge” was a dream. Robinson cited the influence of Gellar’s “Cruel Intentions” role on “Do Revenge,” with her casting almost 25 years after the beloved 1999 film being a surrogate sequel.
“She was my first dream choice,” Robinson told IndieWire. “And it was one of those things where you don’t think she’s going to do it. I was like, ‘Yeah, of course, let’s offer it to her and see what happens.’ You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. But when she said yes, I was flabbergasted and so excited.”
