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Sean Patrick Thomas, teen film king of the late Nineties and early Noughties, is exhibiting me an object much more spectacular than any Oscar or Grammy: his MTV Film Award for Finest Kiss. “It’s proper right here!” the actor beams, after scurrying off digicam to seize it. He’s in what he phrases his “man cave”, the award stuffed beneath his big-screen TV and close to his health club gear. Thomas holds the popcorn bucket-shaped trophy as much as his digicam lens. It’s, I inform him, nearly stupidly massive. “And heavy too!” he shoots again.
He received the Finest Kiss award in 2001 for locking lips with Julia Stiles within the seminal romantic drama Save the Final Dance. To place into perspective the importance of this award – to anybody not raised on a cinematic food regimen of Freddie Prinze Jr, Rachael Leigh Prepare dinner and Jennifer Love Hewitt – Thomas and Stiles received it a yr after Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair, for his or her saliva-riddled smooch in Merciless Intentions, and 4 years earlier than Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams took residence the prize for The Pocket book.
Thomas was additionally in Merciless Intentions. He was not in The Pocket book. However contemplating how magnetised he was to a specific period of coming-of-age cinema, I wouldn’t be shocked if he was a background additional. Again then, he was a jock in the highschool celebration film Can’t Hardly Wait, acquired his head crushed by Michael Myers within the teen slasher flick Halloween: Resurrection, and cameoed within the cult-classic style spoof Not One other Teen Film. Thomas additionally has an extended listing of recent credit (he presently stars in Prime Video’s superhero collection Gen V, and appeared in Joel Coen’s spellbinding 2021 movie adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington), however it’s the teenager movies of yesteryear that individuals (OK: me) are most desirous to ask him about.
Admittedly, this isn’t helped by Thomas’s newest mission: Prime Video’s new TV revival of Merciless Intentions, which transplants the teenager deviance of the unique 1999 movie to an period of iPhones and Olivia Rodrigo. “I’m form of amazed that the film has had a lot endurance,” Thomas says. “This factor had legs!”
He performs a unique character to the one he performed within the movie – music tutor there, college professor right here – however his storyline is intentionally comparable. He’s launched as one of many present’s sole good eggs, which suggests corruption – by quasi-incestuous step-siblings, naturally – awaits. And whereas the brand new collection doesn’t fairly scratch that very same naughty itch as the unique film, it’s all the time not less than mildly indecent. There’s political intrigue, sorority home intrigue, heaps and plenty of bare butts.
Within the unique Merciless Intentions, itself a Nineties spin on the 18th-century French romp Les Liaisons dangereuses, Thomas performed kindly Ronald, who’s – together with a virginal good-girl performed by Reese Witherspoon and a borderline-incompetent naif performed by Blair – embroiled in an elaborate sport of intercourse and seduction engineered by Gellar’s cocaine-snorting prep schooler Kathryn Merteuil. Ryan Phillippe was Kathryn’s bad-boy stepbrother Sebastian; Joshua Jackson his bitchy bestie with a penchant for carnal blackmail. American Pie’s Tara Reid was additionally within the fil as a result of this was 1999 and Tara Reid was in every little thing again then.
It was uncommon then – and now, I believe – for a Black man to steer a studio movie that’s primary on the field workplace. That’s an enormous factor that I’m very, very happy with
It was solely Thomas’s second correct film, and he remembers the set being “playful”, with everybody laughing in between takes. “We have been simply… ‘Whoa, I can’t consider we get to do that,’” he says. “Ryan and Reese have been a pair on the time, so it was good to be round all that younger love. I wasn’t notably educated about Buffy the Vampire Slayer at that time, however I clearly knew who Sarah was – any emotions of intimidation went away inside 10 seconds, although. She was simply so cool, right down to earth and able to play.”
An enormous a part of the film’s attraction – it grossed $76m (£60.4m) on the field workplace, spawned two direct-to-video sequels, two aborted TV spin-offs and impressed a jukebox musical – was its fresh-faced salaciousness. You couldn’t fairly consider a bunch of 16-year-olds have been being so horrible to at least one one other. For the Thomas of as we speak, although, this thought is terrifying. “If you’re a dad, you have a look at every little thing in another way,” he says. He has two youngsters, aged 16 and 14. “After we did the movie, all of us thought, ‘Oh, that is enjoyable, that is loopy.’ Then you have got children and also you’re, like… oh my God! Is that this what’s happening in school? What are they listening to or speaking about at choir follow? I hope this isn’t something near actual life…”
The 53-year-old is at residence in Los Angeles. Thomas is humorous, earnest and, truthfully, form of annoyingly ageless – I believe I spy a spot of salt and pepper in his facial hair, then realise it’s a trick of the sunshine.
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Early on, he skilled in drama on the College of Virginia earlier than ending his appearing research at New York College, graduating in 1995. Shakespeare was his old flame. “I did a scene from Twelfth Night time in a category, and the language, proper off the bat, simply appeared to roll off my tongue. I appeared to grasp it with out making an attempt too arduous, you recognize? I simply ate it up.” By 1996, he was starring within the motion drama Braveness Below Fireplace alongside Denzel Washington. “Once I watch myself in that now, I can inform I’m simply in a daze,” he laughs. “I used to be completely sitting there watching Denzel greater than I used to be really doing my work.”
He moved to Los Angeles quickly afterwards, arriving within the midst of a growth in movie and tv geared toward and starring youngsters – or, properly, twentysomethings pretending to be youngsters. And, for probably the most half, white twentysomethings. “It was a time frame the place it appeared like me and, like, [She’s All That’s] Dulé Hill and [10 Things I Hate About You’s] Gabrielle Union and perhaps a few others have been the one Black individuals in these motion pictures,” he recollects. “There wasn’t a complete lot of room for introspection about it, although. If any person provides you a job, you are taking it since you’re making an attempt to construct your profession. You’re making an attempt to get your hustle on. It’s solely after it’s throughout which you can look again and say, like… wow, they solely gave a handful of us a shot. I’m simply grateful I used to be one in all them.”
He later mocked this very factor in Not One other Teen Film. In it, a Black character performed by Scream 3’s Deon Richmond finds Thomas consuming beer within the kitchen of a home celebration and reminds him that he’s meant to be the one Black man at that exact occasion. “My unhealthy,” Thomas’s character replies, with whole sincerity. “Sincere mistake!” deadpans Richmond.
“On the time I didn’t know if I wished to spoof myself,” Thomas laughs. “As a result of that stuff lives without end, you recognize? However then I believed, OK – what the heck? Any person despatched it to me not too long ago. It’s nonetheless humorous!”
Of that interval, he has probably the most love for Save the Final Dance, by which Stiles unlocked heretofore unthinkable ranges of whiteness as an aspiring dancer who strikes to inner-city Chicago and falls in love with Thomas’s Derek. “Once I first acquired the position, I didn’t really feel assured about it,” Thomas recollects. “I used to be 28 or 29 on the time and the character was purported to be 18. I’m actually no dancer in any respect, and the character had this city background that I didn’t have, both. I felt awkward, however I took it at some point at a time and simply did the work. And, on prime of that, it was uncommon then – and now, I believe – for a Black man to steer a studio movie that’s primary on the field workplace. That’s an enormous factor that I’m very, very happy with.”
He’s, greater than something, grateful. “It is a very, very arduous enterprise,” he says. “The peaks and valleys, all of that. So to have even one mission that individuals keep in mind is a miracle, you recognize? Nevertheless it actually has been only a completely satisfied accident. I’m simply extraordinarily fortunate.”
Positive. However they didn’t simply hand out these Finest Kiss trophies for nothing.
‘Merciless Intentions’ is streaming on Prime Video
