She's All That Turns 20! Rachael Leigh Cook on Why She Was 'Self-Conscious' Making Teen Classic
It’s officially been 20 years since Rachael Leigh Cook’s Laney literally fell for Freddie Prinze Jr.‘s Zack, creating one of the most enduring pop culture moments of all time.
The two actors starred in the hit 1999 teen movie She’s All That, in which the nerdy Laney transforms into a bombshell and Zack realizes the error of his arrogant ways. The moment when the two finally kiss for the first time remains iconic, with Laney falling into Zack’s arms as Sixpence None the Richer’s hit “Kiss Me” plays.
But Cook, 39, remembers the scene for a much different reason.
“I remember feeling really self-conscious in the scene where I have to come down the stairs in the red dress,” Cook told Entertainment Tonight. “There were two of that dress. We needed a stunt double dress for the scene where I had to run out and fall down in the driveway. One dress felt a good size smaller than the other one. Apparently the [main dress] was not available, so I’m in the second dress just going like [holds breath] to get down the stairs. Just without breathing. Say some words and then we’ll be done!”
In a separate interview to E! Online, Cook explained why she’s hesitant to call the movie a classic, even though it remains a fan-favorite for a whole generation of viewers.
“It’s difficult for me to call it a classic,” Cook said to E!, “because to me the classics are like the John Hughes movies I grew up watching. I still feel weird to this day putting myself in any category that could attempt to be as great as those films.”
But she “100 percent takes joy in the fact that people think it’s a ’90s classic.”
Yet the actress, who revealed to ET that she recently skipped her real 20-year high school reunion, said this anniversary is more important to her.
“I had all of those sort of classic high school moments,” she explained. “I got to go to a fake prom, I got to maybe be fake prom queen, like a lot of stuff happened in three and a half weeks in 1999.”
