‘Cruel Intentions’ Sarah Catherine Hook & Zac Burgess On Finding “Humanity” In Their Roles & Who “Was Not Happy” About That Recreated Kiss

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SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details about Season 1 of Cruel Intentions. Although Sarah Catherine Hook and Zac Burgess play conniving step-siblings with questionable boundaries in Amazon Prime Video‘s Cruel Intentions reimagining, this duo isn’t your mother’s Kathryn and Sebastian.

Ahead of the eight-episode series’ Thursday premiere on the platform, the actors behind Caroline Merteuil and Lucien Belmont discussed the “collaborative experience” of creating their characters with showrunners Sara Goodman and Phoebe Fisher, as well as pilot director Adam Arkin. “They were so specific, they were like, ‘We don’t want to copy and paste, we really want a fresh voice, a fresh take on this,'” explained Hook. “And I personally thought that was so smart.

And I’m so thankful because you don’t feel like you have to try to match what’s going on there. So, they really gave us a lot of creative liberties, and it just made our job so much easier and took the pressure off as well, being able to step in, and just adding this new chapter in the Cruel Intentions universe.” In the new iteration of the 1999 film and the 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Caroline and Lucien are at the top of the Greek ladder at the fictional elite Manchester University in Washington D.C.

The series still includes the same indecent wager, this time with Caroline attempting to get the vice president’s daughter Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith) to rush her sorority as Lucien begins developing feelings for her.