Jennifer Love Hewitt Admits Friends ‘Had To Talk’ Her Into Returning to ‘IKWYDLS’

Jennifer Love Hewitt is revisiting one of her most iconic movie roles, but she did not necessarily jump at the chance to rejoin the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise.

In a new interview with Vulture published on Friday, July 18, Hewitt, 46, said that she was hesitant about reprising her role as Julie James in the new movie — the franchise’s first theatrical release since 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

“All of my friends had to talk me into it,” she told the outlet. “Literally up until the last night before shooting, they were like, ‘You know you’re going tomorrow, right?’ ” 

When asked what made her feel “anxious” about returning to the slasher franchise, Hewitt said, “What people were going to say about how much older I would seem than when I was 18. That’s literally the only thing I was anxious about.”

Hewitt costarred with Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe in the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, which follows a group of teenagers who are menaced by a mysterious and scary villain wielding a fisherman’s hook one year after a fatal car accident they are involved in.

The latest movie meets a cast of new characters, portrayed by Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King and Tyriq Withers, who find themselves in similar circumstances in Southport, North Carolina and turn to the now-famous Julie and Ray Bronson (Prinze), who are several decades removed from their own dealings with a menacing fisherman villain.

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Hewitt emphasized in the Vulture interview that she felt she “worked hard on” her performance in the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, only for the public to focus on her wardrobe and body in the film more so than the movie itself. “I brought good stuff to it, and no one was talking about it. It was just ‘Boob, boob, boob’ everywhere,” she said. “I didn’t just show up to wear the little blue top and run around.” 

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