Consider Sarah Michelle Gellar's role in Netflix's Do Revenge a Cruel Intentions sequel
The high camp teen drama finds inspiration in other '90s classic teen films, too
When casting the prim and composed prep school headmaster for Netflix’s teen romp Do Revenge, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Someone Great, Thor: Love And Thunder) had only one person in mind: Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“She was my first dream choice,” Robinson says in a new interview with IndieWire. “And it was one of those things where you don’t think she’s going to do it. I was like, ‘Yeah, of course, let’s offer it to her and see what happens.’ You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. But when she said yes, I was flabbergasted and so excited.”
For her candy-coated Hitchcock-influenced adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers On A Train, Robinson called upon Gellar’s hallmark character, Kathryn Merteuil, from the 1999 flick Cruel Intentions. She became the voice inside Robinson’s head as she wrote Gellar’s principal role.
“I just heard her and sat there and literally thought about Kathryn from Cruel Intentions, like, if she was the headmaster of the school, what advice would she give?” Robinson says.