Jennifer Love Hewitt wanted to embrace her sexy side — without being “sexualized” — when it came to her wardrobe in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
In a new interview with Vulture, published on Friday, July 18, Hewitt, 46, and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, 37, spoke about how they wanted to shape her character Julie’s look for the reboot.
According to the outlet, Hewitt, her stylist and Robinson collaborated to conjure up a look “that felt right — sexy but not sexualized, in vintage T-shirts and blazers and jeans.”
Hewitt described the wardrobe choice in comparison to the sexualized outfits she wore in the 1997 original as “very healing.”
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“Nobody’s going to be talking about my boobs. ‘Oh, you want me to flash you? They’re down here,’” she joked.
Acknowledging she does wear one low-cut top in IKWYDLS “just to give some cleavage,” Hewitt added, “We were like, ‘Well, we’re back. Why not?’”
Earlier in the piece, Hewitt reflected on seemingly being sexualized as a teenager while working as an actress.
“Before I even knew what sex was, I was a sex symbol. I still don’t know that I have that fully defined for myself because it started so weird,” she said, noting that it “bothers me more now than it did at that age because I was in it.”
Robinson told Vulture that she wanted Hewitt to feel sexy onscreen but not solely for the benefit of men.
“We cannot let men take away the fact that she is hot because they wanted to make it their thing,” she says. “We have to reclaim Jennifer Love Hewitt being hot for us!”
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Mom of three Hewitt — she shares Autumn, 11, Atticus, 10 and and Aidan, 4 with husband Brian Hallisay — has previously opened up about how it felt to get so much attention for her body in the 90s.
“In my 30s, I sort of went back and looked at that time again and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” she told fellow teen star Mayim Bialik on her “Breakdown” podcast in January 2025.
She continued, “There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts just openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it. I don’t even remember that, I really didn’t take that part in, but in hindsight it was really strange I think to become a sex symbol sort of for people before I even knew what that was.”
