Freddie Prinze Jr. Catches Back Up With His Wounded ‘Last Summer’ Character 27 Years Later [Interview]
The past comes back to haunt in the upcoming legacy slasher sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer, from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge).
The Fisherman is back and more vicious than ever when five friends cover up their involvement in a deadly car accident. One year later, they are targeted; someone knows what they did last summer and is hellbent on revenge.
The good news for the newcomers is that survivors Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) are back, bringing invaluable experience with them when it comes to dodging that mean hook.
It’s not just experience that these legacy characters bring with them, but emotional baggage and trauma that amassed in the wake of time and outlasting two rounds with the Fisherman. It also means that the road to romance for Julie and Ray hasn’t been the smoothest since we last saw them.
Freddie Prinze Jr., speaking with Bloody Disgusting, sheds light on what that means for Ray. He tells us, “Trauma kind of makes or breaks human beings, depending on whether you deal with it or you run away from it. And based on how we’re raised and the examples we have, it kind of shapes the way we deal with trauma, right?”
The actor continues, “So, to play a broken man, which is what Ray is, because he didn’t deal with this trauma; you can see in a scene with Julie and Ray, their first scene in the movie, how far she’s come and how little progress Ray has made in the same regard.
“I think that wounds and damages him because he sees how much better she’s doing than he is.”
“So, that gives you a lot of room for nuance and performance,” Prinze Jr. shares. “Not everything has to be in the words. There’s a lot of room in between the words to play pain and to play hurt, even though your character’s not saying, ‘Hey, I’m hurting right now,’ because he can’t say those words. He’s a man from a different generation. He’s not a young man like today, where they can express themselves much better. His vocabulary, emotionally, is very limited, so that’s why he doesn’t speak on it, but that’s what sort of breaks him and destroys him and gets him to the place where we find him in the movie.”
Bringing Ray and Julie back is one step of many in creating a new I Know What You Did Last Summer installment. Stay tuned for more insights from the cast and crew in the coming days.
I Know What You Did Last Summer, co-written by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Sam Lansky, releases in theaters on July 18, 2025.
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