Cruel Summer Team Reveals How That Private Practice Family Reunion Came to Be — and What Was Weird About It
Cruel Summer’s unexpected Private Practice family reunion was “a very lucky accident,” according to new showrunner Elle Triedman.
The Freeform drama’s Season 2 premiere on Monday introduced viewers to a complicated teenage love triangle between Megan (played by Sadie Stanley), Isabella (Lexi Underwood) and Luke (Griffin Gluck). But it’s Luke’s relationship with two other costars that is full of history: Gluck’s Cruel Summer dad is portrayed by Paul Adelstein, who also played his character Mason’s father, Cooper Freedman, on ABC’s Private Practice. And Megan’s mom is none other than Private Practice vet KaDee Strickland, aka Gluck’s former TV stepmom, Charlotte King-Freedman. (It seems history might also be repeating itself, as Adelstein and Strickland’s Cruel Summer characters have a romantic relationship in one of the show’s timelines.)
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“We didn’t plan it that way, initially, and then we were thrilled,” Triedman said of the trio’s casting during a Television Critics Assoc. winter press tour panel for the series in January 2023.
“It’s such a special thing to see the three of them come back together,” added Michelle Purple, who exec-produces the Freeform drama alongside Jessica Biel via their Iron Ocean Productions.
There was also another connection behind the scenes: Purple’s husband, Cruel Summer director Bill Purple, helmed a 2012 episode of Private Practice, featuring the three actors. “It was a lovely, lovely reunion,” Purple enthused. “They were right for the part, all three of them. It just worked, and it was lovely seeing them come back together.”
For Gluck, getting to share the screen again with his former TV parents a decade after the ABC drama wrapped up wasn’t a twist that he was anticipating.
“You know, it was strange, I actually found out super late [about the casting]. That was not something that was made known to me before I accepted the role. I think I was maybe even on my way to Vancouver when I found out,” Gluck tells TVLine. “But it was awesome. I really, really, really loved it. And then I texted Paul and KaDee immediately, and I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! Not just one of you, but both of you!’ And I think they were just as excited as I was. It was really cool.”
But when the cast went out to dinner together, it became clear just how much time had passed since they last worked together.
“I haven’t seen Paul in maybe eight years, but we worked together like 10 years ago… He knew me when I was a kid, and so did KaDee. Like, an actual child,” Gluck shares. “And then we all went out to this tavern, and Paul saw me order like an old-fashioned or something, and he was like, ‘Oh, my God, have things changed!'”
And how weird and jarring was it for the adults to see their former TV child now involved in a sex tape scandal as Cruel Summer‘s Luke?
“Oh, my God, think about it for me!” Gluck counters. “[They] played my parents, and now my parents are seeing me on a sex tape!”
Cruel Summer airs Mondays at 10/9c on Freeform.
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