The actress gives new life to the role Sarah Michelle Gellar originated in the 1999 film for the Prime Video series
It's been more than 25 years since Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe shocked the world with a deliciously taboo story in Cruel Intentions.
Now, the tale is being retold for a new generation -- but the new cast knows the OGs might not be tuning in.
"I understand if they don't [watch]," Sarah Catherine Hook, who reinvents Gellar's role as a scheming it girl who wields her step-brother's lust as a weapon in the new Prime Video series. "That might be a little weird for them."
Hook, 29, leaves it at, "We'll see."
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Though she's not sure how the reboot series will be received by the original cast, Hook says it's "an honor" to be telling this story in a new way.
"I've loved this movie so much for so long. My best friend and I, this was one of our favorite films together," she says.
Recalling the first time she watched it, Hook says, "I think the first time I ever watched it, I think I was in seventh grade -- which is too young to watch -- but I was with these older girls who were really cool and they introduced it to me, which I feel like is the perfect introduction to this movie. Watching it with cool girls and you're just like this dopey seventh grader with braces going through puberty."
She didn't feel pressure coming in, though, and credits the showrunners for that. "They gave us all of this creative freedom with the roles and really didn't want us to copy and paste. They wanted us to bring our own take on it and that helped a lot."
"Honestly, I was just more excited to be a part of it, just because I loved it so much."
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Getting to recreate the taboo tension that Gellar and Phillippe originated as Kathryn and Sebastian alongside Zac Burgess as her character's step-brother Lucien was "a lot of fun," Hook says.
"It's naughty and delicious in a f---ed up kind of way that you're just like... This is just, I don't know -- when are we ever going to get to do anything like this [again]?"
She adds, "I think that's part of why actors love what they do, because we get to be in worlds that are not part of our reality."
Hook, who stars next in season 3 of The White Lotus, is also keeping her fingers crossed that the story will continue in a second season -- and for the possibility of meeting some of the original cast.
"I'm hoping if this goes on, if we can have more seasons, it would be fun to have [some of the original stars] make some cameos," she says. "It'd be so, so great."