Jennifer Love Hewitt on ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer Return’

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for, including the ending of, “I Know What you Did Last Summer,” now playing in theaters.

Nearly three decades after screaming into the ether, “What are you waiting for, huh?” Jennifer Love Hewitt is back on the big screen as Julie James, the Southport, N.C. native who was stalked by a hook-wielding killer wearing a fisherman’s slicker in the classic teen slasher “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

After starring in the 1998 sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” Hewitt wasn’t approached to return for the 2006 direct-to-video movie, nor the 2021 reboot television series. But director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and her co-writer Sam Lansky had a different vision for their 2025 sequel, which directly ties in the events of the 1997 Southport Massacre.

“What was very apparent from the word ‘Go,’ is how much both of them loved the original movie,” Hewitt tells Variety, reflecting on their pitch for the new movie, which follows a new group of Southport kids, who accidentally cause a deadly accident and face the consequences — in the form of a copycat killer. Julie gets embroiled in the deadly drama when the coeds reach out to her and fellow survivor Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) for help.

“I feel like, if you’re going to go back and make something new, but pay homage to an original, you have to love it. You have to understand it,” Hewitt says of reading their script. “So, I was just blown away and it meant a lot to me.”

Robinson and Lansky also welcomed Hewitt’s ideas about where audiences find Julie all these years later — a professor who specializes in the effects of trauma, who has endured a nasty divorce from Ray and vowed never to return to Southport. “They allowed space for me to know her better than anyone, which was so kind because they didn’t have to do that,” Hewitt says. “I felt very seen as somebody who had created her the first time.”

Her input was important because Julie’s role is more than a simple cameo. The character features heavily in the movie’s second and third acts: first, she advises one of the twentysomethings, Ava (Chase Sui Wonder) about how to outsmart the killer; then, Julie swoops in to save the day when she realizes that there’s not just one, but two fishermen killers at play, and that one of them is her ex-husband, Ray. (It’s there, in that final showdown, that Hewitt gets to deliver her much-anticipated line, “What are you waiting for, huh?”). There’s a bonus: in the film’s credits scene, Julie tracks down her college roommate Karla (played by Brandy Norwood) with whom she (and Ray) survived the killers in “I Still Know.” Julie reveals that this story isn’t over; a killer is coming after them — yet again — and they’re going to face it together.

“It’s not lost on Brandy, it’s not lost on me, and it’s not lost on Jenn that three women have said, ‘Let’s go,’ and (the studio) heard us,” Hewitt says of making the cameo a reality. “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.”

Indeed, Hewitt is passionate about the character, but even more so about what she represents: a new chapter in the legacy of returning “final girls,” alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in the “Halloween” franchise and Neve Campbell in the “Scream” movies.

“It is showing young girls out there that we get older and you can’t count us out,” Hewitt says, proudly. If you’ve got a “fighter spirit,” plus the ability to fight and run in heels or high-heeled boots, there’s room for everyone. “The women in these horror movies that are coming back are strong. And they mean something in this world.” And, perhaps, most importantly, she says, “Fans want to see them. Where other parts of society try to go, “Oh, well, she’s gotten a little older, so we’ll just go get this person now, ‘Final Girls’ are ageless. It’s a good message to send: We do get better with age, and sometimes we get a little feistier, and that can be fun to watch.”

Read on as Hewitt shares her thoughts on Julie’s trauma (including her divorce from Ray), why the film’s killer twist made her a little jealous, reuniting with Norwood and ideas for the sequel.

What was important to you about where we find Julie 27 years later? She is a professor who teaches about trauma, but it doesn’t seem that she’s dealt with hers as much as you would think she might have.

As weird as it sounds — because I believe that most people would want to play a healed person — I did not. I really wanted to play a person who was clearly doing what they were doing for a living as a way to self-medicate themselves every day. I really do believe Julie James is teaching those children what she cannot teach herself, which is to let go somehow and not live in trauma. I think she’s teaching herself in that room by talking about what trauma does to the brain, the heart and the mind, and I feel like being there in that room on that campus, she’s created a safe space for herself, knowing that she still doesn’t open mail, she has a lot of locks at her doors, and she still very much lives as a traumatized, fearful person — which, given what she went through, how could you not? That was really important to me, because I think that that’s an interesting person to see, and there is real strength in not necessarily being healed but living through it anyway. To me, that felt like a strong Julie to find again 27 years later.

One of the first things we see in Julie’s house is the famous image of Helen, Barry, Julie and Ray. But, he’s cut out of it because Julie and Ray have had a bad divorce. Their shared trauma affected them differently. What did you think of that development?

It became very clear on the road that night that these people were all going to handle it differently, pretty instantaneously. Some of that I had even forgotten, to be totally honest; it has been a long time, and I’ve had three kids, so I had to go back and watch for myself.

But we were never a unit again after that accident — Barry was in his mind; Helen in hers; and Ray, very much, left Julie to hang out for herself. If she hadn’t been silenced and completely squashed on the road that night by her friends’ opinions, I believe Julie would have gone to the police. She would have taken whatever happened to her and maybe lived a life with a clear conscience. So, I think that what happened with her and Ray off-screen was what should have happened. They probably tried; there was just really no getting past how different they are as people. If we had lived a happy 27 years, I don’t think the audience would have loved that.

How shocked were you to find out Ray was one of the killers? That the trauma changed Ray in a way that inevitably made him snap?

There’s a real split here with how people feel about the storyline, and I totally get it. I was shocked until I took a minute, and I really thought about it, and I went back and looked at the other movies, and I get it. I really get it.

If you look at who Ray was, even from that first movie, he was, for five seconds, a starry-eyed, young lover on a beach. The rest of the time, he was this sort of dark and brooding guy, who took on a lot of dislike for Southport — for the way that people were treated there, for the way that he was treated there, for the way that he was looked at, for the way that things were handled. That was always who he was. So, ultimately, it’s a believable storyline.

It’s wild, but if you’re going to come back 27 years later, are you not going to do wild? I think it’s kind of brilliant, and as shocked as I was, I do ultimately think that it makes sense.

The trailer revealed that you’d say your famous line — “What are you waiting for, huh?” — again, but audiences didn’t know that you’d be delivering that line to Ray in this final showdown. What was that like?

It was awesome. Because, in the first movie, that line came out of desperation and fear; a very young girl who just had a moment of gumption, and honestly, a killer could have jumped right out of that moment and taken her out. Like that would have been a whole different movie. (But) that’s where that came from.

This “What are you waiting for?,” she’s been waiting 27 years to say to somebody that she probably innately knew wasn’t going to turn out to be who she thought — because I pictured them to have gotten married and divorced, and she probably realized some things were off about him in that marriage anyway. So, I think she’d been waiting a really long time to say that. Which is why that quiet one felt like the right way to do it.

Then that second one, obviously, is a cry from like her young self to this new young person to say, “Fight like hell.” I just loved it like it was so cathartic. It felt so good to say it again. I was very aware when I was saying it, that people were going to love it and be excited about it, and hopefully cheer in a theater somewhere.

That’s a good point: Julie was silenced on the road that night 27 years ago, and she finds her voice in a real way right there.

I think so, and it’s great for, Chase’s character, Ava, to see that. The story that’s been told is, like Ray says in that scene, “Crazy Julie James and these sad kids who, like, went off to never be seen again.” So, for Ava to see this person who had the same experience she did has turned into a bit of a badass and is able to face not only her past, but a person from her past, head on and with real strength, Julie is a great role model for her in that moment. I was just super psyched about it.

Was there any part of you that was a little jealous that you didn’t get to have that twist and play the killer?

Oh my God, yes! 100%! I would have been like, “Should we try it?” From the acting standpoint, of course. But the truth is, that’s not who Julie is. The audience would have completely turned their backs on us, so that was never going to happen. That will never happen. And that’s okay. You have to play who you are in these movies, but the actor in me was like, “Oh, come on, I want to do something fun, like that too,” but Freddie nailed it! I really, truly feel like, at the end of the day, everything that happens in this movie is the way that it should be happening. And I stand wholeheartedly behind it.

Julie survives her showdown with Ray only to find there’s someone who still knows what she did last summer, which is when she goes to see her college roommate Karla. What was it like to reunite with Brandy for that scene? The final girls are back together!

It’s really cool. It is what naturally should be done with Karla and Julie. I think they still have a lot of story to tell.

I don’t love to watch horror movies because they really scare me. But I do root for horror movies in one very big way: On television and in movies, women have had to fight extra hard to be seen as natural bad-asses; fighters; feral animals with great strength, characters that can be ugly and that you can root for all at the same time, who can be complicated, and all those things. We have had you kick and scream and fight for those roles everywhere else, but never in horror movies. Horror movies have always seen “final girls” as these women with the ability to be small and mighty, or whatever they look like, they just have the ability to be amazing and kick ass and all of these things. And I just love that about horror movies.

So, it really excites me and makes me feel so happy that we might be able to see — and the same thing happening with Neve (Campbell in “Scream”) and Jamie Lee (Curtis in “Halloween”) — not only these characters that people love coming back, but the older versions of these women coming back. Saying being 40, 50, 60, doesn’t stop us. You will root for us and find our characters as sexy and as awesome and as badass as the 22-year-old that might be beside us. It’s a really powerful, great moment that’s happening, and I’m pinching myself that I get to be a part of it, because it’s big messaging behind really fun summer movies. We are coming back stronger and better than ever, and no age and no time is stopping that.

Jenn told me that you were just as passionate about Brandy returning as she was, and the three of you got on the phone together to make it happen. What was it like to be back on set together?

Gratitude, truly, is the word that keeps coming up for me with this. That night, Brandy and I just kept looking at each other, going, “Oh my God, we’re here! And it feels like no time has passed at all”. But also, like, “Whoa, we have kids, and we have these new lines on our face,” — well, I do, she doesn’t, but it was just like time had passed, but it hadn’t. And it was really fun. When we hugged that night at the end of that scene, the thought of “I will see you again, and we will get to play some more and do something probably really crazy,” felt exciting and special.

What have you and Jenn talked about when it comes to a sequel? Have you started breaking a story?

Not yet. I know she has tons of ideas. I have thoughts of some things that I’d love to do or see in it, if possible. But right now, it’s a quiet wait and see if the movie does what we think it will do (at the box office). If it does, then it’ll be a really fun, hot and heavy, quick conversation, like, “OK, well, now we really have to do this. So, what are we doing?” and I’m super excited about that.

It’s, quite literally, like, “Sony, what are you waiting for, huh?”

Right! And I will be fully saying that to them at least two weeks into the box office.