Cruel Summer: Sadie Stanley and Lexi Underwood Discuss Megan and Isabella’s ‘Ride or Die’ Friendship [Interview]

This interview contains spoilers for Cruel Summer Season 1 Episode 1, “Welcome to Chatham,” and Cruel Summer Season 1 Episode 2, “Ride or Die.”

Sadie Stanley and Lexi Underwood spoke with reporters at ATX Television Festival about Cruel Summer Season 2 and their respective characters, Megan and Isabella.

At the center of the season is the friendship between these two women. They proclaim themselves to be “ride or dies,” the ultimate best friends. However, as we see throughout the first two episodes, their friendship is far from perfect.

“One of the points of tension between Megan and Isabella is that their definitions of ‘ride or die’ are a little different,” Stanley stated.

“I think Isabella has a tendency to take things a little bit farther than Megan, and I think Megan doesn’t have that same sentiment, and she also has such a close relationship with Luke, and so there’s just tension there and a little jealousy there.”

Underwood shared a similar statement and offered some insight into Isabella.

“I feel like her loyalty and her drive kinda stem from her lack of love and acceptance from her parents. She shares that she’s the daughter of diplomats, and she’s always had what she wanted but not what she needed, and what she’s needed is the space to just be vulnerable and to be accepted.”

“And I think that when Megan and her family do that, it’s the first time she’s [Isabella’s] really felt that before. She also kinda feels as though that she has to go to extreme lengths [to be able to] keep her loved ones around her… Whatever ride or die means to her, that final length, she’s willing to go that in order to keep Megan in her life,” Underwood said.

The three timelines of the season — Summer 1999, Winter 1999, and Summer 2000 — feature Megan and Isabella at different points in their friendship.

Stanley commented, “It’s interesting to watch their relationship grow because Megan goes from not liking Isabella at all to them being tight like sisters, and then they are practically strangers again.”

Something happened between Megan and Isabella between Winter 1999 and Summer 2000, and the Cruel Summer Season 2 premiere suggests that whatever rift these two went through, it happened around the time of Luke’s death/disappearance.

After Luke’s body is discovered, Isabella tries to get through to Megan, so that they can get their stories straight. Megan, however, doesn’t want to be anywhere near Isabella, stating that she doesn’t want to see Isabella again once the investigation into Luke’s death is over.

When asked if Isabella wants to salvage that friendship during the Summer of 2000, Underwood had this to say, “Isabella still genuinely wants a real friendship with Megan. I think she’s a little bit in denial and delusional.”

Underwood continued, stating that Isabella believes that “she can have the perfect situation, the best of both worlds, where her and Megan are able to become friends and stay friends after everything that happened. You see that Megan isn’t that open into re-opening that friendship just like she wasn’t open to wanting friendship with Isabella in the first place.”

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Stay tuned for more from our interviews with the Cruel Summer cast at ATX Television Festival.

Cruel Summer airs Mondays at 10/9c on Freeform.

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