Cruel Summer star Sarah Drew on what's inside Cindy Turner's head

Cruel Summer‘s Cindy Turner is a complicated mother. Sarah Drew stars in the Freeform series as the mom of Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia), a young woman who takes over her classmate’s life after the other girl’s abduction. But Jeanette isn’t the only one with problems—Cindy has her own issues to deal with.

Everything is coming to a head in tonight’s season finale, so Hidden Remote spoke to Grey’s Anatomy alum Sarah to talk about what would possibly be enough for Cindy to be happy, and what it’s been like for her to play a role that’s been completely different from anything else in her career.

Plus, remember when Sarah voiced one of our favorite high schoolers in MTV’s Daria? Read our interview before you tune in to the Cruel Summer finale tonight at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.

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Hidden Remote: Cruel Summer is such a different role for you. How did you originally become involved with the show, and was that difference part of the appeal?

Sarah Drew: Our showrunner Tia Napolitano is an amazing, amazing writer and showrunner that I worked with for many years on Grey’s Anatomy. She actually called me and said, “Look, you’re about to get an offer. And you’re not going to see much in the first episode of what happens with Cindy. So I would love to talk to you about how compelling this character is, if you’d be willing to talk.”

So we chatted and I was like, “This chick sounds interesting.” But we talked at great length about the twists and turns this character takes and I was sold and I thought it was written so well. These characters were so compelling. So I jumped on.

HR: What has it been like for you to step into playing the parent of someone getting into trouble, rather than being the character getting into trouble? Where you have a different vantage point on Cruel Summer‘s drama.

SD: I have always been fascinated by mother-daughter relationships. I think there’s so many layers; there’s so much baggage that can often come in that relationship. The time of [being a] high school girl, that specific period of time is a very, very special and significant time for both the mom and the daughter. I was really excited to dive into that whole relationship, I knew there were so many layers to peel back.

HR: This particular mother-daughter relationship is so not healthy, because Cindy is living vicariously through Jeanette, who in turn is living vicariously through Kate. What do you think it would take for Cindy to be happy, or at least to fix the relationship with her daughter?

SD: That’s a great question, “How do we fix it?” I don’t know. I think for Cindy, so much of her identity is just based in “Is my family successful? Do we look okay? Are we in good standing in the community?” She’s a really interesting character, and I think she can be a little manipulative, and I think she can be pretty insecure. So we’ll see what happens.

HR: She’s not a completely terrible character, though. What favorite moments have you had with Cindy? Are there particular scenes in Cruel Summer that have so far stood out to you?

SD: I loved the day drinking scene; I had so much fun shooting that scene. I did it a lot of different ways—played with her being way more drunk, played with her being way more contained. And it was weirdly playful. I had so much fun with that scene, that might be my favorite.

But I also had a really beautiful moment…Chiara Aurelia, who plays my daughter, is such a sensational actress. We had this one scene where she gave me three totally different versions of herself for the same scene, because in the editing room they don’t know which one they’re going to use, or maybe they’ll use bits and pieces of all of these different things. And it was so amazing because if she comes in with a totally different energy, it completely changes my energy. So we did all these different versions of the same scene, and it’s fun to see how many different places you can take a scene.

HR: The show is also unique in that it goes between three different years, so we see Cindy and Jeanette’s relationship in three different time periods. Logistically, how do you handle that as an actress?

SD: For me, you just plop yourself right into the present moment. What am I dealing with in this moment? What came right before? I don’t need to think about what’s coming. Let me just think about what came right before. And that really informs my ability to show up in each of these scenes. There are definitely logistics moments where I’m like wait, hang on a second. Has she seen this yet? Or when does she go to this place to make this discovery? And I’ve had to be reminded of some things, but our writers and the crew and everybody, they were so great at keeping us all right on track.

HR: You’re playing the mom of a high schooler in Cruel Summer, but at the start of your career, you voiced a high schooler when you were Stacy Rowe on Daria. So you’ve gone from a funny way to look at high school drama to a completely dark, twisted version of it.

SD: Stacy was a very funny character to play. I think I cried in every single episode. I think that Stacy just dissolved into tears of insecurity and fear daily. So it’s a very different feel. I haven’t really thought about that. It was such a long time ago that I recorded that show; I was in high school when I recorded that and it was my first real taste of professional acting. So yeah, that’s fun to think about both of them.

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Cruel Summer airs Tuesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.

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Cruel Summer star Sarah Drew on what’s inside Cindy Turner’s head

By Brittany Frederick | Jun 15, 2021