Interview: Madison Iseman on Playing Twin Sisters in I Know What You Did Last Summer
The Amazon Prime Video series I Know What You Did Last Summer is now streaming. The series features plenty of new twists and turns from prior adaptations and is led by Madison Iseman, who plays twin sisters central to the mystery in a fantastic performance.
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with I Know What You Did Last Summer star Madison Iseman on portraying both Lennon and Allison in the series.
Tyler Treese: I was really curious what the biggest challenge was in portraying these two twin sisters. You make them feel very distinctly their own characters. What was the challenge in that?
Madison Iseman: For me, the biggest challenge was probably just the technical aspect of playing twins and the amount of work that went into it. I mean, we would work on one scene for the entire day. It was just a very drawn-out process because you have to switch and change hair and makeup halfway through the day. But as far as like making them their own separate people, that’s always been my favorite part of the job is making backgrounds and histories for these characters and living through them.
The original film was very celebrated for its chase sequences. How were the more action-oriented sequences here to film?
They were so much fun. Those are some of my favorite. As our series goes on too, there’s a whole lot more of them as well. They’re always fun, but I obviously have been a huge horror fan my whole life. So those are always the iconic scenes. I can’t wait and look forward to doing every time
When it comes to that original film is that something you saw growing up? Were you a fan before you got involved with this project?
Yeah, I was a huge fan growing up. All of those slasher films from the nineties, like Scream, but I Know What You Did Last Summer was just so iconic. So to be able to be a part of it was just super cool.
This being a series gives time for the characters to really be fleshed out and developed. What aspects of Lennon did you really find the most rewarding to play?
Lennon, the best part about playing her is she’s just kind of the type of girl who always feels like she’s on top of the world. So, honestly, whenever I was playing Lennon, I was just always in a really good mood every day at work. Because we could just have fun and like party and just be easy. Then sometimes Allison, she’s a little bit moodier, a little darker, some of the days start to drag a little bit. But I mean there are parts of them that I feel very close to personally, but then there are also parts of them that I could not be more completely opposite from them.
It’s shot so gorgeously in Hawaii. How was it filming out there?
Hawaii was beautiful. I think it might be one of my top favorite places I think I’ve ever filmed. But to be there at such a special time, we were filming during the pandemic. So we were all grateful to have a job and to be in such a beautiful place. So I wanna go back. It’s so great.
Your character and Brianne Tju’s character have such a complicated relationship. Can you speak to that kind of bond they have?
Yeah. I think there are two girls who have been together since they were little and they love each other as best friends. They love each other a little more, and I think that both of them are still trying to figure out exactly what that means as they get older. But in a way, I just think they’re really life partners. So that relationship, at least for us, was very important to make sure that came across on screen.
There’s so much freedom with streaming. There’s nudity, there’s so much gore. How fun is it being in a project that just gives you so much freedom and you don’t have to really worry about, “oh, this isn’t PG,” and can just go all out?
Fantastic. I mean, the amount of times I think we drop the F-bomb, which I don’t know how many they kept in, but just knowing that you can and it’ll be okay. It just makes filming a lot of fun because we can have the freedom on set to kind of just have fun and do what we want and just know in the editing room, they’ll fix up whatever they need to fix up.