Throwing it back to the 1990s! She’s All That premiered in 1999 and paved the way for Netflix’s gender-swapped remake 22 years later.
The movie starred Rachael Leigh Cook as Laney Boggs, a quirky art student who transforms into the prom queen after garnering the attention from her high school’s “It” boy, Zack Siler (Freddie Prinze Jr.). Although she didn’t believe that the school’s resident jock wanted to be her friends, Laney entertained Zack’s advances until it’s discovered that her jaw-dropping makeover was actually a bet made between her new beau and his best friend Dean (Paul Walker). The flick also starred Gabrielle Union, Dulé Hill, Anna Paquin, Matthew Lillard and Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, among others.
When it came time for the movie to be remade into a modernized version, a few of the original stars had no qualms about returning to set. Although they played different roles the second time around, Rachael and Matthew’s appearances in 2021’s He’s All That alongside Addison Rae and Tanner Buchanan was an obvious nod to the original flick — especially with the Scooby Doo star’s dance moves returning to the screen.
“The focus and the impetus of the plot of this [new] movie is the inflated importance of social media and quantitative popularity, and the fleeting, fickle, and totally superficial nature of those relationships — and in naming what’s not important in a very real way,” Rachael told Bustle in August 2021 of the reimagined version of the flick in which she played the single mom of Addison’s character, Padgett.
Although her character in He’s All That didn’t have a name listed in the script, Rachael was quick to go back in time and figure out what her She’s All That character would be like as an adult.
“I certainly didn’t, in the performance, shy away from the parallels in any of my delivery,” the actress explained to Bustle. “I didn’t fight the writing.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Rachael added, “The way it was written, I couldn’t help but feel like they were trying to make people wonder if it was Laney but older. I think it’s possible, but this was never discussed with me; it was not my intention, I was just following the writing.”
Before He’s All That premiered on Netflix, the Josie and the Pussycats star was hopeful “this movie affords them as many opportunities as the original did for me.”
Click through our gallery to see what the original She’s All That cast is up to now.
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