‘She’s All That’ Netflix Remake Flips Genders, Features Kardashian Cameo in Trailer

Netflix finally released the first trailer for He’s All That, a remake of the 1999 teen comedy She’s All That, which itself was inspired by Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. In He’s All That, the gender roles are swapped, with Addison Rae playing the Freddie Prinze Jr. part and Tanner Buchanan in the Rachael Leigh Cook part. The trailer also spoiled the cameo from Keeping Up With the Kardashians star Kourtney Kardashian.

Rae stars as Padgett Sawyer, who is challenged to turn the unpopular Cameron Kweller (Buchanan) into the prom king while also avenging herself after a humiliating fallout with her boyfriend. It’s the exact same plot as She’s All That, wherein Prinze’s Zack was challenged to turn the unpopular Laney (Cook) into a prom queen. He’s All That was directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls, Vampire Academy) and written by R. Lee Fleming Jr.

Both She’s All That and He’s All That can trace their story roots back to the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, which would later be the inspiration for the classic musical My Fair Lady. In Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins accepts a challenge from his friend Col. Hugh Pickering to turn the flower-seller Eliza Doolittle into a “proper” English lady. The success of She’s All That in 1999 proved that the story still resonates in any format, as it grossed $103 million worldwide. Now it’s up to He’s All That to see if the story can succeed in 2021.

The new movie is an important stepping stone for Rae, who has never starred in a movie before. The 20-year-old is a TikTok star, with over 82.3 million followers and over 5.3 billion likes on the platform. When she posted a clip of the He’s All That trailer on TikTok, it got over 7.6 million views in two days. By comparison, the full trailer on the Netflix YouTube channel only has 930,000 views since it was published on Aug. 4.

While many may think Rae had a leg-up on the competition as a huge social media star before she turned to acting, she told Elle she has had to work twice as hard as others because she has to overcome her reputation as a TikTok star. “In this industry, when you come in and get labeled as one thing… people like to keep you there,” she told the magazine. “Which is understandable, and I get it, but what people don’t realize is I’ve always wanted to do acting, I’ve always wanted to do music. I’ve always wanted to do all these other things that they didn’t really get to see or know because I just started being known when I was 19 years old.”

“People haven’t really seen the background, or the classes I used to take and things like that,” she continued. “So I try to tell myself, ‘You have to work that much harder to get people to take you seriously.’” Fans will get to see if all that hard work paid off when He’s All That is released on Friday, Aug. 27.