It’s been 21 years since Freddie Prinze Jr. played Zack Siler in “She’s All That.”
“He was that stereotype dude. And then you put me in there, and I'm a nice guy so I made him a little sweeter probably than he was originally written. And that allowed a bit of vulnerability there so that when he did mess up and he felt bad for it, people actually gave him some sympathy instead of just going ‘Ah, he's a jerk.’”
The bonds he formed with Dulé Hill and Rachael Leigh Cook, who played Preston and Laney, have lasted until this day.
“I became close with everybody. I mean, Dulé Hill was at my wedding. I'm still real close with Dulé today. Rachael, I'm still super tight with today. She's like a sister. There are only two women that I worked with that didn't hit on me, and she was one of them. Whether I had a girlfriend or not. So I've always had big love for Rachael and respected her.”
He gets choked up when speaking about Paul Walker, who played Dean Sampson Jr. in the film.
“We had a special connection through jujitsu ... And it's just a good lesson for people to remember: don't put off friendships and relationships. We were always gonna roll. We had very different philosophies on jujitsu. And we wanted to spar each other bad, but we kept putting it off because of this reason or that reason … If you have someone you click with, nurture that relationship. Don't take it for granted. You don't water a tree, it dies. So keep watering those friendships and stay tight.”
He says people bring up “She’s All That” all the time and he’s glad a whole new generation has discovered the film. He thinks people still connect with the story because of the relatable message.
“It's a story that's been around long before ‘She's All That’ existed. And people connected to it from different generations because of that type of story. And now, hopefully this new generation'll connect to the new sort of — what's the right word, incarnation, incantation, one of those. It's an "in." Hopefully, they connect to that the same way that — my generation had our movies that we clicked with. So for me, it was ‘The Breakfast Club.’ For that next generation, a lot of people really clicked with She's All That. So I love that people have that kinda passion for it.”
The actor is partnering with Kelley Blue Book as a spokesperson, and says his uncle gave him his first Kelley Blue Book when he was searching for his car at 15 years old.
“And I started looking through there. And I found my very first car which was a 1987 Bronco II. It had, like, 47,000 miles on it. And that was my high school car. It had a 10-inch bass tube in the back. And I would listen to, like, '90s bass like, DJ Magic Mike. It was just all bass lines. It was that was the '90s. It was awesome.”
To launch its 2021 Best Buy Awards of the best value-per-dollar cars, Kelley Blue Book has created an exclusive island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The island, KBB.com HQ, will be accessible to fans to explore now through 12/17 from 3pm – midnight ET. As players do their part by fishing trash out of the water in-game, Kelley Blue Book will donate funds to American Rivers to help river preservation. The island will be accessible only through a unique Dodo code that players can receive after emailing KBBAnimalCrossing@coxautoinc.com.
For more with Prinze Jr., including his memories on set while filming the dance scene and his wife Sarah Michelle Gellar’s cameo in the film, watch the video above.