‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Director ‘Tried Relentlessly’ to Convince Sarah Michelle Gellar to Return for Sequel Despite Her Character’s Death: I Had to ‘Pitch Some Crazy S—’

Despite her best efforts, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson couldn’t bring Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s Helen Shivers back to life for the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot.

In a recent conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Robinson said she “tried relentlessly” to fit Gellar into the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Her efforts were for naught, however, because Robinson could not maneuver around the fact that Helen Shivers “is dead.”

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“I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead,” Robinson said. “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.’”

While Gellar will be absent, original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. will return for the horror sequel. The film also stars newcomers Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Lola Tung, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Austin Nichols, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers, Jonah Hauer-King, Billy Campbell and Gabbriette.

After the new “IKWYDLS” film was announced, Gellar confirmed with People that she would not be starring, reassuring that her character is unequivocally “dead.”

“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.”

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” hits theaters July 18.