How ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Found Its 2025 Ensemble: Aging Up for Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, and More

Co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson tells IndieWire about the pressure to find a cast that could live up to the iconic original.

The original “I Know What You Did Last Summer” instantly became an iconic horror film in 1997 thanks to its impeccably cast ensemble consisting of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe. Hewitt and Prinze have now returned to reprise their characters in the requel of the same title, but once she had them aboard, co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson faced a daunting challenge: finding rising stars to play the new characters who could live up to the standard set by the first movie.

“I tried not to think too much about the pressure of it all, because then you can just drive yourself insane,” Robinson told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “For me, it was always just about wanting to find the people that disappeared into the roles, and also the alchemy of the five of them together. Because you can have five actors, but if there’s not chemistry, you have nothing.”

During the casting process, Robinson sought actors who could play slightly older than the original film’s protagonists. “I wanted to age up the characters,” she said. “I didn’t want to make a high school movie.” Going through the traditional casting process of readings and tests, Robinson landed on an ensemble consisting of Madelyn Cline (“Outer Banks”), Chase Sui Wonders (“The Studio”), Jonah Hauer-King (“The Little Mermaid”), Tyriq Withers (“Atlanta”), and Sarah Pidgeon (“Tiny Beautiful Things”) to play the friends bound and traumatized by a deadly secret.

To a certain degree, Robinson found that the casting came easy. “It came together in a way that felt undeniable to me,” she said. “When an actor leaps off the screen on your computer in a casting tape, you just kind of feel something. Like when Tyriq Withers opened his mouth, he had such presence — it was like, this must have been what it felt like when people discovered Channing Tatum. He’s such a movie star, but he’s not there yet, and it’s fun to watch this whole cast like that — everybody is coming up in a way that feels very exciting, and seeing them all together really felt like lightning in a bottle.”

The ease with which the actors worked together translates to the screen in performances that feel lived-in and authentic; as in the original film, the actors in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” genuinely feel like friends, which makes the movie all the more involving as the body count rises.

“The environment that I want to create [on set] is one of ordered fun,” Robinson said when explaining how she created the camaraderie between the performers.

“I don’t want it to be so unruly that it feels like there’s not a leader and the wheels have come off the train,” Robinson said, “but I want to make sure that everyone feels like their ideas matter and that there is space for their ideas, even the bad ones.” Robinson’s love for the actors is infectious — you can feel it as an audience member watching “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and it makes the movie both scarier and funnier. That’s something she wanted to make sure they all felt while shooting.

“You’re creating a space that feels safe for experimentation and play and fun,” she said, adding that the playfulness has to coexist with a rigorous professionalism. “We’re going to make these days, and the crew’s going to go home, and we’re going to respect each other. We’re here at a job. So that’s the environment I like to foster, where it’s not so much play that it feels like you’re not at work, but enough play that it feels really fun and you can find things that aren’t on the page. Or that weren’t necessarily what you went into the day thinking you were going to shoot. You allow the process to take you where it’s going to take you.”

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” opens in theaters on Friday, July 18. To make sure you don’t miss Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s upcoming episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.