Freeform’s hit anthology series “Cruel Summer” is back for a second season with a different cast of characters.
Season 2 (Mondays at 9 p.m.) is set in a Pacific Northwest town and follows blue-collar teen Megan (Sadie Stanley), her new world-traveler sophisticated friend, Isabella (Lexi Underwood) and Megan’s best friend, Luke (Griffin Gluck). They get involved in a love triangle — and a mystery — that impacts (and ruins) some of their lives.
“I’m friends with [Season 1 star] Chiara [Aurelia],” Gluck, 22, told The Post. “She’s phenomenally talented, and I’m a bad friend because I actually didn’t watch the show until I booked the job!
“While I was watching [Season 1], I was like ‘This is good. Oh wow, I can see why everyone is praising Chiara and [why] she’s nominated for awards.’ When I got to the last episode, I genuinely was like ‘Oh my lord, what a great twist! This is awesome!’’”
The first season of “Cruel Summer” was Freeform’s most-watch debut ever, snaring nearly 4 million viewers.
It starred Aurelia and Olivia Holt and had a different mystery involving multiple timelines in the ’90s.
While Season 2 tells a new story, it also has three different timelines and is set about 20 years ago.
The story follows Megan, Isabella, and Luke in the summer of 1999 when Isabella first comes into their lives — in the winter of 1999 after their relationships have changed — and in 2000, right around the Y2K craze.
Gluck said he’s too young to have any solid memories from that era.
“What I gather is that the kids are basically exactly the same as they are nowadays, other than some quirks here and there,” he said.
“They didn’t have social media which is a great thing, [so] their interactions were more face-to-face than online. One of the main things I did to prepare – which is a minor thing, but I thought it was important – was to use technology less … seeing what that was like.
“When I got to Vancouver [where the show was filmed], I would leave my phone in my apartment and go on long walks,” he said. “That felt weird. I felt almost naked, in a way, without my phone in my pocket. But it was really nice. And once I got into the habit of doing that, it was helpful. It was a tiny added layer.
“They’re normal teens, going through the normal problems that most people go through, nowadays — love, loss, friendships, drama — but the main thing is that they weren’t able to record everything within a moment, or instantly communicate,” he said. “If you wanted to say something to someone, you had to remember it for later. It’s weird how minor of a thing that is, and how big of an impact it had.”
Gluck said that the cast didn’t know how the mystery would unfold while they were filming the show.
They had various theories as to what would happen, and by the time Gluck finally found out how it would end, “I was like ‘That makes sense. All the pieces are falling together,’” he said.
“It’s a great twist, but it just makes sense within the storyline if you pay attention.
“It builds to that moment perfectly.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
