Ali: Obviously, you already have a cult following from people who, like myself, have watched it when we were actually in university. Then, other people who discovered it in the last 17 years. How do you think the movie will play to the current crop of university students who maybe didn't grow up with it and now they're not living in a world of chat rooms and dial-up, they're living in a world of smartphones and social media and #metoo. You know, how is that early 2000s environment, do you think is going to play for an audience that has a very different university experience than what you and I had?
Williams: That's a great question and one that we asked ourselves since the idea of doing this movie came about, is 'When does this take place?' In my mind, when we created Undergrads originally, it wasn't like, "this is set in the year 2001." It was just, this is when we're making it, so this is what everything looks like. But the idea of it was always supposed to be that the show is going to appeal to, and relate to, an audience that is in college now, and hopefully relates to anybody who has been in college. There are some universal themes that we explored and that we want to explore in the movie that, hopefully, still exist in college now. I have no idea. I haven't been there in 20 years!
So for the guys, the summer break that they just experienced will have seen a plethora of advancements in technology and pop culture, so essentially they're going to be caught up to where we are now. Everything looked like 2001 when they left freshman year. Now, everything is up to date when they return for sophomore year.
