ComingSoon caught up with actress Jennifer Love Hewitt to discuss her new collab with chocolate brand Ferrero Rocher, her love of hosting and the holidays, plus her new memoir and Lifetime movie. The I Know What You Did Last Summer star also discussed the reboot and several iconic past roles.
“This holiday season, Ferrero Rocher, the iconic premium chocolate brand with a passion for helping people elevate their celebrations, is looking to inspire hosts with simple ways to level up their event to the gold standard with their new campaign, Add Your Golden Touch,” says the official description. “To help bring these helpful hosting inspirations to life, Ferrero Rocher is partnering with beloved actress and self-proclaimed holiday hosting extraordinaire Jennifer Love Hewitt to help share simple ways you can ‘add your golden touch’ with Ferrero Rocher.”
Tyler Treese: Jennifer, you have this really exciting campaign going on with Ferrero Rocher – the great chocolate brand. They’re doing the “Add Your Golden Touch” campaign, which is full of these great hosting tips. Everybody knows that hosting is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. Could you tell us a little bit about that campaign and what excited you about getting involved with it?
Jennifer Love Hewitt: I was really honored [to be asked] to team up. I consider myself the holiday junkie. So I am a big hostess during the holiday season — really all year long, but definitely during the holiday season. And Ferrero Rocher is such a nostalgic and classic brand. So many people, when we announced our partnership, reached out. “Oh my gosh, I grew up with that chocolate in my house all the time, or my grandma’s house, or my aunt’s house, or my mom’s house.”
So it just feels familiar to people. I’m familiar to people and sort of nostalgic for people as well coming from the nineties. So, it felt like a great partnership. I love their chocolate.
I love what they do. I love that the Golden Touch adds a little bit of magic to the holiday season. It’s a great hosting gift. It’s a great last-minute gift. I love that you can find their chocolates in your local grocery store and reach for them if you’ve forgotten or if you need a last-minute sparkle on your table.
We just had such a good time doing the little ads. When I walked on the set, I was like, “Can I live here? This is so beautiful.” So it was great, and I’m just really honored.
They launched this great website with a bunch of little tips. You can make your own DIY ornaments and these little place cards. They’re really cute, and the chocolate’s legitimately really great as well. Like a perfect stocking stuffer or just to put out. It’s delicious.
Yeah, 100%. I’ve been putting them in my kids’ lunches since we did the since we did ads, and they’re loving it. Now the kids are fighting over Ferrero Rocher at school, which is kinda cute.
You said you’re the holiday junkie. I was curious — what are your holiday movie traditions? I’ve always gotta watch Rudolph, and I’ve gotta watch A Christmas Story. Those are the two for me.
Oh yeah. I always start my Christmas movie year out with The Holiday. It’s my favorite. But I’m also a big Christmas TV movie fan, so I watch all the Christmas movies when they come on. I’m really lucky to get to be in one this year, which is awesome. But yeah, we definitely do that. Right now Aiden, my three-year-old, is very much into The Grinch. So we have Grinch on all day, all night over and over and over.
You’re not just part of a holiday movie this year. You directed The Holiday Junkie, which is incredible. I know you’ve directed television episodes, but what was the biggest change of doing a full movie? Was anything surprising, or did all that time on set kind of prepare you for it?
So, we only had 15 days to shoot, which was crazy. [laughs] It was wild. So we shoot like a 9-1-1 episode in eight to nine days, and that’s a certain page count. This was double that page count. Plus, I was in everything.
It was a lot, but it was amazing. I love directing so much. I wish I could just do that full-time. And we just had a great time. It was surprising to me how much I enjoyed having Christmas in June. I was like, “Is this gonna make me sick of Christmas early in the year?” And it didn’t happen. I just loved it. It was great.
Tyler Treese: I’m really excited to watch that. Your husband stars in the film with you, as well. How is it directing your significant other? He already knows to obey your rule, right?
Well, I have to be bossy, so that’s great. ’cause I love to be bossy.
So it was like, “Guys, you know what? I have to boss you around. I’m so sorry to my friends and my family.” [But] that was nice. It gave me an excuse to do that. [And] he is so wonderful in this movie. He has not done a Christmas movie before. I think he should be in all of them. He’s a perfect Christmas movie guy, just dreamy, talented… all the things. We had a lot of fun getting to fall in love with each other every day. It was great.
You have a memoir coming out as well. It’s such an exciting time for you. It’s called Inheriting Magic: My Journey Through Grief, Joy, Celebration, and Making Everything Magical. What are you most excited about people to experience when they can pick it up on December 10th?
Just getting to know a little bit about me and my family. We’re pretty private about that stuff, but this felt like a really nice way to share. Also hoping to inspire people to add the intention of their own sort magic into their families a little bit more every day, and being able to honor my mom was really a blessing for me. Not only just in life but in my grief journey. It felt really special to honor her this way.
You mentioned earlier that you’re obviously a familiar face. People have nostalgia for you They have a nostalgia for your projects, like I Know What You Did Last Summer. It’s incredible that that is still so beloved 25+ years later. Now it’s coming back. How wild has it been for that to just be a constant in your life? The fanbase for that never went away.
It’s so crazy. Yeah. The movie just turned 27, so did I. I’m only 27 – that’s what I call myself now [laughs].
Yeah, it’s great. My kids just watched it for the first time and that was wild. My big kids sitting with them and their friends watching a movie and seeing myself at 18 and looking just like my daughter, which is crazy. They loved it.
I loved that fan base. I love that people still root for that movie. It was a big moment for me in my life. It was my first time really starring in a movie I was 18. It just has a special place in my heart for sure.
This new one is so exciting. How does it feel returning to a character that many years away? That’s such a unique situation that doesn’t happen very often. Is that easier because you’ve lived in that space for so long or is it tricky because you’re trying to recapture that initial experience? How is that?
So, the interesting thing is I’m not officially signed on yet, but we’re close. We’ve been trying to figure out a lot with the 9-1-1 schedule. It’s been a little tricky.
But the idea of returning to Julie James is really exciting for me. It’s scary. I think on the personal level of being like, “what are people gonna think of the 45-year-old version of Julie James?” I think ’cause I’m a woman and human, that part of it makes me a little nervous.
But playing her again would be an honor. I think I feel excited to show or see what she’s been up to and how she has changed, and what she still holds onto from that infamous night on the road.
Another one of your great early movies is Can’t Hardly Wait. I just re-watched that a month ago, and that just completely holds up. It’s also a trip now because even background characters in that film are huge names now. It’s crazy to see. What stood out about filming that?
Everyone in it was tremendous. For me, it was such a crazy experience because I had never been to a high school party. It’s still, to this day, the only high school party I’ve ever been to, and what a party it was. It just kept going and going and going. So for me it was a really special movie because it was sort of my high school experience that film.
I loved playing Amanda Beckett. So many people still come up to me and say, “Amanda!” and they love it. There are so many group costumes still on Halloween where like friends – adult friends – come as the cast from Can’t Hardly Wait. It’s like a great group costume, I guess, and it’s pretty funny. So, I get a big kick out of it.
That’s so fun. I also wanted to ask – because you’ve always had a good sense of humor about yourself – you’re part of an early Family Guy standout [S3E19 – “Stuck Together, Torn Apart.] Not many actresses can say they dated and hooked up with Peter Griffin.
Right? That was so fun. I had such a good time. I was so excited. And it was just on the other day, which is so weird that you brought it up. I just got to see it again the other day. And it was really fun and silly and good. Then they mentioned me on South Park [S2E26, “Cow Days”] – like, in the same year or something. I was like, “Oh yeah, we’ve made it.” It was super cool.
You’ve definitely made it when you’re being parodied in an adult cartoon. That’s incredible.
Another incredible piece of your history is the music video for “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias. When you first heard that song – what was your reaction? Because when you two shot that music video, you really became the face of an iconic song.
Oh, it was such a beautiful song. I absolutely loved it. Mickey Rourke in that video was wild. It was so fun getting to do cool stunt stuff with him. We had a blast filming the video. It was really beautiful.
My daughter actually started singing that song out of nowhere like five months ago. She was like, “Oh, I just heard this amazing song,” and I was like, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard it.” But that video’s a little saucy, so I haven’t told her I was in the video yet. We’ll see one day soon.
You also had a cameo in one of my favorite movies, Tropic Thunder. You’re just there for a few seconds, but it pays off a really funny joke in the movie. How did that come up for you to appear in that?
You know what? They called, like, randomly – super last minute – and asked if I would do it. And I was absolutely so honored. I was there for, I don’t know, 45 minutes. It was super fast. But it ended up being really cool. That’s another one where randomly, people will just yell, “Tropic Thunder!” in a mall or something, and I’m like, “Yeah, all right.” It’s kind of funny.
Thanks to Jennifer Love Hewitt for taking the time to talk about her collab with Ferrero Rocher and more.
