Stealing the color purple out of The Hollywood Reporter’s rainbow, season two of Freeform’s nail-biting, murder slinging, mystery dangling anthology series returns to screens June 5, with a new haze of stars including Griffin Gluck, Lexi Underwood, and Sadie Stanley. Jessica Biel rocketed into the limelight storming across movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Blade: Trinity, and Stealth from the early 2000s, as well as hiking up mainstream television in the thundering series 7th Heaven. Now, Biel is reigning us back into the storm shelter known as Y2K as an executive producer of Freeform’s Cruel Summer.

It just brought me back to my youth,” Biel (Candy, Limetown) said Wednesday night at the show’s Los Angeles premiere for season two. “It brought me back to being a young woman in Hollywood and a young woman trying to work through this business and the world at this time when technology was changing so much — fashion and music and everything. I think at the time, we didn’t realize how cool it was. But looking back now, I miss it so much.”

Chilling on the beachfront of a Pacific Northwest town, Cruel Summer’s second season follows the boiling friendship between Luke (Griffin Gluck, Locke & Key, American Vandal), Megan (Sadie Stanley, The Goldbergs, Somewhere in Queens) and the enigmatic new girl that just blew into town like a tsunami, Isabella (Lexi Underwood, Sneakerella, The First Lady), and the blood, guts, and bones that ensue when a budding love triangle ends in a devastating accident.

“I am Jessica Biel’s number one fan,” Stanley said, who carves a place for herself in the show as computer coder and straight-A syndrome sufferer Megan. “I think she’s one of the coolest women in the world. Not only a Y2K icon, obviously, but also just an incredible person.”

“I’m really inspired by the way that she takes charge of her own destiny and her own career,” continued Stanley. “She said, ‘If I’m not getting cast in things that I want to be cast in, I’m just going to create them myself.’ I think that’s really, really awesome. And not only that, she’s paving the way for other young women to play really complex, interesting, flawed characters and do really cool projects. I’m so grateful for her making the space for me and Lexi to do that, and many more women after me.”

Underwood aired similar sentiments. “Being able to work with incredible, strong women — I’m very big on that,” the actress who flickered on screen in Little Fires Everywhere said. “It’s just really wonderful to see women in that position that are also so giving and kind towards the younger generation of artists.”

Season one, released two years ago under the umbrella of the pandemic, went viral for its gripping teen drama starring Chiara Aurelia (Luckiest Girl Alive, Tell Me Your Secrets) and Olivia Holt (Cloak & Dagger, Kickin’ It), unfolding over three summers under the influence of the ’90s and the sudden disappearance of a girl. The second season wears the same suit, cycling through three timelines per episode.

“We wanted to maintain the structure and the skeleton of the show, which is the reason it’s so unique because of the timeline and the dual perspective,” Biel said about the multi-timeline structure of the anthology show. “But we wanted to change the themes this year. We’re talking even more deeply about friendship, betrayal, obsession, loyalty. How far would you go to protect somebody you love? What will you risk? Those are real world problems that adults deal with all the time, and so do young adults.”

Gluck added that it was a challenge juggling all three timelines. “I learned a lot from the show as an actor,” he commented. “It was very roll with the punches, run and gun. You get the scripts when you get them and you better be prepared. We all had to learn how to rely on each other in a lot of ways. You know, just take it one day at a time and get to set and work.”

Grab the remote so no one can change the channel during the season two June 5 premier of Freeform’s Cruel Summer.