Rachael Leigh Cook is back in the romantic comedy space with her newest movie, Love, Guaranteed, which is now streaming on Netflix. Her breakout role was in the classic teen rom-com She’s All That, which was released in 1999. Even over 20 years later, She’s All That remains a beloved rom-com. HollywoodLife talked EXCLUSIVELY with Rachael about whether or not she’d be supportive of a reboot down the road.
“I stand on the other side of that coin,” Rachael said. “I was in Tom & Huck, which can’t be the first time the Tom Sawyer story was made into a movie, but I played Becky Thatcher. I was in a second version of The Baby-Sitters Club. People don’t remember that it was originally a Canadian series. I was in the remake of Get Carter. I would never certainly want to do anything but be supportive of people bringing something I did many years ago to a new audience now. I would absolutely want to be supportive in whatever way I could as long as I felt like it was doing service to the memory of the project that I had originally set up.”
When it comes to a direct sequel, Rachael is definitely more on the reboot train. “I would be fascinated to know how they would consider doing that, but I could never answer that blindly,” Rachael told HollywoodLife about the possibility of a sequel. “I think that She’s All That is an inherently high school story, but I think that there’s definitely room for revamping that idea again to bring it to a new audience.”
She’s All That is a modern adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion and the 1964 film My Fair Lady. The movie also starred Freddie Prinze Jr., Paul Walker, Gabrielle Union, and Usher. In the film, Freddie’s character, Zackary, makes a bet that he could make any girl in school Prom Queen. Zack’s friend chooses Laney Boggs, the cynical, unpopular art student. As Zack and Laney get closer, he forgets all about the bet and falls in love with her. After some drama caused by Zack’s ex-girlfriend, Zack and Laney end up together.
As for where Laney Boggs would be today, Rachael said that Laney would “probably be making masks for her friends and family.” She also added: “She’s All That isn’t just a makeover movie. It’s really a sidebar to it being a movie about people who learn to change their minds. Wouldn’t that be a valuable thing that we can all do these days? So I hope that the Laney that would exist in 2020 would be an incredibly open-minded one and not one that sort of liked to judge people like she certainly did in the beginning of the movie.”
