Freddie Prinze Jr. Thought He’d Be Fired from She’s All That (Exclusive)

Although he was the leading man in a teen rom-com that would go on to massive success in the late ‘90s, Freddie Prinze Jr. didn’t think he was all that. 

At the time, Prinze was coming off of well-regarded performances in The House of Yes and the first two installments of I Know What You Did Last Summer, but several castmates in 1999’s She’s All That were bona fide stars, including Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Kieran Culkin and Anna Paquin. In the film, Prinze starred as Zach Siler, a popular student who attempts to woo Cook’s dorky character, Laney Boggs, and make her prom queen.

“It was one of the best experiences. I was nervous as hell that I was going to get fired every day, but other than that anxiety, it was literally the best experience,” Prinze, 49, tells PEOPLE of making the high school-centric film while discussing his new partnership with DoorDash. “I felt like everyone was so much better than me, and I didn’t have a lot of acting experience. I didn’t go to acting school. I was really learning on the job, so I was really nervous going to work every day that that was going to be the day, and they were going to be like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to let you go.’ ”  

Prinze’s unwarranted uneasiness faded a month into filming, once he realized that eliminating him would essentially mean reshooting the whole movie.

“So then I started kind of feeling myself a little bit more, but it literally took a month of filming of just pain and anxiety,” he says, adding that he was terrified of being late on set. “I’d be like an hour early every single day. I was so nervous.”

Although the movie is now 26 years old, Prinze knew in real time how memorable the cast was, especially Cook, 45. 

“We’re still super close friends to this day. I love her to death. She’s like a sister to me,” he says. “She was so welcoming to me from day one. She had more experience than I did, and I had to really lean on her a lot during that movie. I had hardly any experience, and she had been doing it since she was younger at a high level. So I really relied on her and leaned on her and trusted her, and she was super good to me.”

As tight as any real high school friends, Prinze, who returns to the big screen on July 18 with the newest adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer, developed deep connections with many others from the cast, too. Dulé Hill, who went on to star in The West Wing, attended Prinze’s 2002 wedding when he married Sarah Michelle Gellar; Prinze and the late Paul Walker bonded over a love of Jiu-Jitsu. Lil’ Kim, though, left a lasting impression.

“I fell in love with Lil’ Kim and thought she was the coolest chick in the world,” he said of the rapper, who had already been nominated for a Grammy when she signed on to She’s All That. “She would show up in a limousine with 10 people, but she just wanted to come in a regular car by herself. She was so real, and so down to earth and so cool.”

Ironically, Prinze and Gellar are now parents to a high schooler in their daughter, Charlotte, 15, and a soon-to-be high schooler in their son, Rocky, 12. Both children have busy schedules, which prompted Prinze to partner with DoorDash for its five-week Summer of DashPass promotion, which gives DashPass members discounts of up to 50% off meals, groceries, electronics and summer essentials.

“I was literally going through [the DoorDash app] when they brought the campaign to me,” Prinze, who stars in DoorDash’s humorous Summer Scaries campaign, says. “My kids had just gotten out of school. One had a camp for an activity that she does at school. My son’s really into racing, and so he’s in a go-karting camp, and I have to take him there every day. I also am the cook in my family, and I don’t want to cook every single day. When you’re a good cook, that’s the expectation. I also don’t want to go out to dinner every single day. That’s expensive as hell, too. So I literally was already using the app in my normal life just to get tacos to the house so that I didn’t have to cook.”

A weekly DoorDash user, Prinze recently used the app for groceries while his wife and daughter were away on vacation.

“My son is 12 and he sleeps late, so half my day is screwed,” he says with a laugh. “I can’t just leave him and go to the store, and if I wait until he wakes up, we’re not going to have time to do all the other stuff he wants to do. So with the app, you can literally just order the groceries that you’re going to cook that night. It can be something that’s simple.”