When co-showrunners Sara Goodman and Phoebe Fisher started adapting “Cruel Intentions” into a series for Prime Video, taking out the sexual tension between the central step-siblings wasn’t even a thought in their mind.
“It never even crossed our minds not to have [that relationship],” Fisher told TheWrap, with Goodman adding “part of what’s appealing about this … is we just ignored … a little bit [of] the rules of today. There’s no social media, and no one’s good or bad. Step siblings are still hot.”
Based on the 1999 classic film of the same name as well as 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” the Prime Video series maintains the DNA of its predecessors, centering on a cruel deal between step siblings Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess) for Lucien to seduce naive newcomer Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith). In exchange, Caroline promises Lucien he can finally have what he wants: her.
“We didn’t want it to be woke,” Goodman said. “We really did have to fight for it to stay ‘Cruel Intentions,’ to keep it cruel and to keep it fun, and to keep it based on the relationships and the characters, rather than kind of building an outside fake story that kind of falls apart and changes the tone of those shows.”
With “Dangerous Liaisons” set in the royal courts in pre-Revolution Paris and the original “Cruel Intentions” movie set in the elite circles of the Upper East Side, Goodman and Fisher didn’t want to re-create the New York City background, noting that “Gossip Girl” had already nailed that setting.
It was Fisher’s idea to bring “Cruel Intentions” to collegiate Greek life, where reputation is everything. “There were still the haves and have nots — it was all about how you presented,” Goodman said, which Fisher adding the sororities and fraternities in the series offer a “peek behind the curtain of a rarefied world.”
With Fisher pointing to the “built-in social hierarchy of fraternities and sororities and all the drama that can come from that system,” the series picks up after a hazing incident left Manchester College’s Greek system in jeopardy, with Caroline, the president of Delta Phi Pi, certain that the VP’s daughter, Annie Grover, is the sorority’s ticket to immunity.
With Caroline, Lucien and Annie loosely based on the iconic characters played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon, respectively, in the 1999 movie, Goodman and Fisher knew they wanted to expand the Cecile character, played by Selma Blair in the movie.
“Cecile in the movie is not very smart, and … we do have a character who’s not very smart, but he’s 100% lovable,” Goodman said, referring to Khobe Clarke’s Scott Russell. “The CeCe character, we really wanted to be so smart and in an intellectual way and to just not be so smart in an emotional way, which many of us suffer from.”
Fisher added that CeCe is near and dear to her heart, adding that “a lot of my own quirks and a lot of my own way of speaking and her references” made it into CeCe’s character.
Beyond the main trio’s drama, “Cruel Intentions” follows its ensemble characters as they stumble through explorations of their sexuality, family issues and even a professor-student relationship.
“It also still lives in the border between before full adulthood, so we’re still willing to give those characters the benefit of the doubt, but they still believe they are adults and behave as adults, which was so key in the movie,” Goodman said, adding that she doesn’t feel like there’s been a “great college show.” “There’s a certain amount of pressure right before you step into independent adulthood that serves the show, that gives it a little bit more stakes of what’s going to happen to them when they leave here.”
All episodes of “Cruel Intentions” are now streaming on Prime Video.
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