‘Cruel Intentions’ Series Bosses on Finale Power Moves, Season 2 Plans and If More of the Movie’s Cast Could Make Appearances

[This story contains spoilers from the season finale of Prime Video’s Cruel Intentions.]

In the season finale of the Cruel Intentions series, a landmine is set off in the world of Manchester College’s miserably wealthy. Following a series of power games that got a little too personal for the show’s leading trio, Lucien (Zac Burgess) and Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) have evolved from playful adversaries into genuine enemies, with Annie (Savannah Lee Smith) no longer content with being a pawn in their battle. 

As Lucien reveals he has real feelings for Annie, Caroline’s jealousy boils over resulting in a series of explosive actions, one of which leads to an emotional break-up between Annie and Lucien. But Lucien is not known for running away with his tail between his legs and, in a bid to get the final jab, he sleeps with his step-mother Claudia (Claire Forlani). Meanwhile, an unsuspecting Caroline has turned her focus to re-seizing control over CeCe (Sara Silva) by sleeping with Professor Chadwick (Sean Patrick Thomas) before anonymously reporting him to the school for inappropriate conduct with a student. 

It’s the kind of line-crossing move that lights a fire in Annie, who’s now looking to launch her own war with Caroline with the help of wannabe and resident “white knight” Beatrice (Brooke Lena Johnson). The set-up for a potential season two of Prime Video’s remake series leans heavily into nods to Roger Kumble’s classic 1999 film, with the finale’s last moments even paying homage to the movie’s famous final scene — a car ride over a bridge set to The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” that reimagines who’s in the driver’s seat. 

Whether the series will get renewed for a second season is up in the air, with Goodman acknowledging it’s “such a weird world of television where you don’t know how many seasons you’re going to get, and you don’t know how many episodes those seasons are.” Still, the duo has plans for what’s next. “We’ve divided the school year up into four or five sections, and we definitely need to get to graduation, but we’re very slow moving. We haven’t even gotten to Halloween,” Goodman tells The Hollywood Reporter, with Fisher teasingly adding, “The costume party.”

And if possible future seasons may feature more appearances by original Cruel Intentions cast — like the return of star Sean Patrick Thomas — Goodman and Fisher say it’s not off the table if the interest and timing are right. “The cast from the original are so iconic in those roles. For us, the story always comes first, and if there was an organic way to have those characters exist in our world, we would certainly be open to it, but as of now, the worlds have not collided,” says Goodman.

As part of the second half of an hour-long sitdown with THR, Goodman and Fisher talk further below about their vision for a second season, how they secured that iconic Verve needle drop, and their adaptive approach to exploring classism, consent, age gaps, sex and intimacy before breaking down all those finale chess moves. 

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In the 1999 Cruel Intentions movie, Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian’s (Ryan Phillippe)’s half of the “love triangle” felt like something between two hyper-competitive people who like the chase more than each other. Kathryn especially felt like she had more desire for power than for Sebastian. But what’s happening between Annie, Lucien, and Caroline in this series feels like there’s actual attraction. Did you want this to feel like a three-pointed love triangle?

SARA GOODMAN Yes, I think in an even bigger way, probably.

PHOEBE FISHER With more legs than you’ll ever know. (Laughs) 

Part of how that manifests is in the sex tapes that Lucien makes for Caroline, which she watches and eventually publishes to the campus community. Through that, you get to your modern take on sex shaming. Lucien shared all but Annie’s video with Caroline, without those other women’s consent, but can you explain Caroline being the one who violates their privacy publicly? 

GOODMAN Part of it was what started this conversation, which was the love triangle and, what does that love triangle look like? What are her feelings? What is their love language and relationship, and what boundaries is he willing to cross for her? So there is that question of what are you willing to do for love. She’s not going to have sex with you, but she’s going to watch you. It is, weirdly, their love language: love letters, in a very twisted way. That’s his justification for doing it for her, because he loves her. And then she weaponizes them when she feels betrayed. 

FISHER I think it’s interesting that he cares deeply about the consent of his partners — with getting the consent to videotape — but Caroline doesn’t care about the consent aspect of it, and so it’s Caroline who’s the one who’s committing the bad behavior.

This also touches on the larger way you explore sex and intimacy. In the movie, when Annette (Reese Witherspoon) and Sebastian are intimate, it’s the only time sex is depicted. But in your take, it’s the inverse with Lucien having meaningless sex onscreen and viewers not seeing him with Annie. How are you thinking about sex and intimacy in this show?

FISHER We joked around a lot that if you actually were in love in our show, then you would never have sex. If the feelings are real, you cannot touch. (Laughs)

GOODMAN We made the choice that for right now especially, sex is power. Sex is another tool for entertainment. It’s another game, and the physical intimacy, that longing and yearning and all of those things that we love on television — the will they or won’t they, and creating true intimacy between the characters — was not going to come from that.

You make some other interesting choices in the relationships of CeCe and Chadwick (Sean Patrick Thomas), and then through Lucien’s dalliances with more mature women, including his stepmother. How did you want the audience to understand and explore consent, appropriateness, and power imbalances differently through those relationships? 

GOODMAN Appropriateness versus consent is different for us. 

FISHER I think with Chadwick and CeCe, we did design it to be the will-they-won’t-they longing, yearning relationship of the show. It was important to have it be a healing, heady, intellectual relationship where they’re both learning something about themselves through this relationship. They’re discovering the kinship between them at the same time. They are both aware that it is maybe not the best person that they’re falling for, but we have Chadwick stating that there is a power imbalance to make that a relationship of the show that didn’t squick you out. 

GOODMAN With Chadwick and CeCe there are boundaries, there is recognition of what is going on and they feed each other. Their feelings for each other are real and not just sexual. She feels smarter than she’s ever felt in her life being around him, and he feels engaged. He’s been damaged by his ex-wife, too. It is a pretty pure relationship. Claudia created Caroline and she is very competitive with her daughter. Claudia cannot have anyone have more power or more love than she has. Claudia is a terrible parent, for sure. She’s a terrible step-mom. She is a terrible wife. At the same time, that’s Lucien’s decision and it’s one of self-destruction. His decision blows himself, Caroline, his family, and his world up. And that self-destruction? We love that about the character. It’s what we will hopefully forgive. 

Will we forgive her? I don’t know. But you understand what formed Caroline. I think that was the most important part of Claudia — that you understand why Caroline has this relationship with Lucien, too. You understand they were Flowers in the Attic. You understand their bonding and her need. He’s the only person who understands where she’s come from, and now he’s going to blow it up. More than just that power imbalance, it’s a family dynamic, and that is why people will be horrified and also maybe titillated — but they’re not physically related. I think we want to be able to go wherever we want. Not in a parental way, but in a way that feels true to what these characters in their extreme might do. 

While we’re talking about CeCe and Chadwick, I imagine you didn’t anticipate their discussions of fascism to be this timely when you were writing this years ago. Can you explain what was under that choice to connect them through that subject? 

FISHER Outside of it being just deeply romantic (laughs), it was a fun, allegorical way to have CeCe discussing her relationship with Caroline and Caroline’s relationship with the sorority. Caroline is their fearless leader, but I think that having those sort of headier discussions with Chadwick may have penetrated a little bit of her psyche in terms of the dynamics at play in her own life with her own Pol Pot.

GOODMAN Also, Chadwick’s never had to explain why it’s bad. I think in most conversations, it’s a given. It’s bad, yes, but even just having to explain it makes him have to look inside at why and what those values are, and what the challenges to his status quo are as well — what he accepts as societal norms and what we all accept. I think that challenge to him is exciting for him, too. I just love that it’s an intellectual connection — even if it’s fascism — which no one else is having. They have their language and their references. We love them nerding out.

Another part of your modern take on boundaries and consent comes through characters like Blaise (John Kim) and Scott (Khobe Clarke). Scott is a take on the character Greg McConnell (Eric Mabius), who Sebastian threatens to out in the 1999 film. In your take, you have Lucien call Scott gay in public at a party, which could be construed as an outing. Can you explain that moment and that choice? 

GOODMAN I think Scott would not identify himself as gay. I had a friend who went through this in college where he was messing around with his best friend all the time, but he wasn’t gay in his mind. He was going to get married and have babies with a woman, and only when [he and his friend] parted ways did he realize he’d been in love with him. Before that, he didn’t realize that those were the feelings that he had for him. It’s hard in our day and age — we live on the coast. We live in a very self-aware environment. 

But I think that there are kids who grow up in a certain way, go to college, and are just messing around like they did in prep school. I don’t think it’s his identity at that point. I think only when he tries to be with Annie does he realize that there are feelings involved [with Blaise], that this is not just messing around because that’s what people do. I think that identifying himself as anything takes a long time for him, so when Lucien says it, even though that’s what’s been in the back of his brain for the last couple of episodes, he just isn’t ready to hear it. He’s fighting it at that point. 

Blaise and Beatrice are perhaps your biggest expansions in exploring class and privilege. Why did you want to center the experiences of people who might not have wealth, but are throwing punches in this fight, or people who had wealth, lost it, or are trying to hide it? 

FISHER There’s such a premium place on privilege and it being the thing that creates reputation, especially in that structure of the fraternity and sorority world that’s so steeped in these traditions and values. So having a character that’s deeply embedded in that system and is exposed as not being “one of them.” It was an interesting avenue for us to explore.

GOODMAN Classism, I feel, isn’t done in the same way that all the other “isms” are often done. The fact that his big shame is that [Blaise] is poor, that he needs the job, that he needs something — there’s a desperation in Blaise that for me breaks my heart for him. He’s willing to do whatever he needs to do, but it’s not because he’s a person of color, not because of his sexuality. It’s because he doesn’t have the money, and he knows he doesn’t belong. So in that way, that desperation, I think, was interesting for us. And I’ll tell you a secret, which is, that Beatrice is the richest of them all. She’s a Subaru-driving rich person.

FISHER Our decision is that her name is Beatrice Asterworth. (Laughs)

GOODMAN She’s annoying. That’s the only reason they won’t let her in.

In one of the season’s final sequences, we see Annie approach Beatrice (Brooke Lena Johnson) and reveal she believes it’s Caroline who reported Chadwick. It’s the first time we see Annie not just accept what’s happening to and around her, but say “I want in this game.” What does this say about her growth and where she’s headed?

FISHER That was one of our big discussions when we were talking about the character of Annie. She is coming to college. She’s the youngest of them. She’s a freshman. They’re all seniors, juniors, or sophomores. But she’s the youngest of them, and it’s her first time away from her family. At home, it’s like a job that she’s a part of her family, so she’s [at college] just trying to figure out who she is. Then she gets introduced to this world of scheming and manipulation, and instead of shying away from it, she enjoys it.

GOODMAN She knows how to play, too. She grew up in politics. We see her in episode five with her mother manipulating the situation and doing what she wants. She understands power dynamics, and there’s no way she’s going to sit back and let them be played on her without playing back.

FISHER She has the most capital of them all. 

GOODMAN And she has the best mask because they don’t know what she knows, and they don’t know what she’s capable of. 

The final shot is Lucien driving away to The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” in a scene that’s a twist on the movie’s ending. It’s not where some might have expected the series to end its first season. How did you think about the pacing of this series in terms of where you wanted to end and why did you want to give Lucian that moment?

GOODMAN Well, I think it’s not the end of the series. We hope it’s not. And because we are hoping it’s not the end of the series, what we wanted was for him to show the most humanity he’s ever shown with Annie in the previous episode — the most vulnerability, the most standing up for himself, the most deciding he’s a good person. Then to blow that up just as she’s realizing that she believes that about him, too — we like that confluence, and we liked not knowing how much power Caroline has over either of them anymore. That triangle feels like it’s been blown up and leveled. All of the people in Caroline’s life, even CeCe, have now gone rogue.

FISHER Caroline’s infrastructure which she spent four years building up, is now starting to crumble. Lucien’s just set off a land mine over there. (Laughs)

GOODMAN And does Caroline know? What will she do? And with Annie becoming a player in the game, what is the board that she’s playing on now?

That ending scene is also the second time the song, famously used in the movie, is played. The film’s soundtrack also included the Counting Crows, Placebo and Fatboy Slim — rock and rock alternative bands that aren’t dominating “Top 40” charts like in the ‘90s. How did you and your music team think about crafting your soundtrack for the series?

FISHER Two songs were actually written into the script, and they were the call-back moments of the jazzy version of “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” and then also the cover of “Every Me and Every You” by Placebo in that big moment at the end of five. Those two moments felt important to include within the history of the film and be shout-outs, but do it in a new way that felt organic to our show. Beyond that, we wanted to incorporate needle drops from every era. We have modern-day songs. We also have a couple of throwbacks. Then we have our amazing composer, Jeff Cardoni, who knocked it out of the park with the score. 

GOODMAN We had a lot less money than the movie had. (Laughs) And it’s a different time, so we had to pick and choose. We fought for every needle drop that was in the show. Interestingly, Olivia Rodrigo has some rock and roll, some modern-day rocker in her. But we really tried to mix it up. We tried to give the frat its own musical soundscape. We chose to make an orchestral score with Jeff, so that the balance of the songs from the original or versions of them, and then newer needle drops — some of which are more high profile, and some of which are less — could all feel like you’re in it. You’re not quite sure what the time period is. It’s the same way that we don’t use electronics. They exist, people are on their phones, but it’s not the way that they communicate.

This is not a one-for-one adaptation, and because you have committed to not being that, it changes where this can go in a second season. How much do you think you’ll continue to diverge if you do get to continue? 

GOODMAN We’re really hoping that people fall in love with it for what it is and that they want to go on this journey with these characters in this world, wherever it’s going to take us. So will there be shoutouts? Of course, we love all of that stuff. But we’re already eight hours into an hour-and-a-half movie. So we want to make sure that you’re seeing the essence of the characters, the essence of the tone, the essence of the taboo. All of those things that made all of the previous incarnations so delicious and despicable will continue, and we will make our own path while still maintaining a bridge. There’s always going to be a bridge. It’s still his car. She still has the cross necklace.  

Speaking of, a cocaine cross in 1999 is scandalous. Maybe not so much in 2024? How might that necklace come into play in the future of Cruel Intentions?

FISHER We don’t need to know, necessarily, whether or not that cross is going to cause some trouble, but I don’t think it’s going to cause trouble in exactly the way that it did.

GOODMAN It’s a nod, but I also think it speaks to her character, and there is a way that it plays into our story just like in the film, but not in the same way.

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Cruel Intentions is streaming all episodes on Prime Video. Read THR‘s first interview with showrunners Sara Goodman and Phoebe Fisher, and with star Sean Patrick Thomas.