Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick slay in ‘Another Simple Favor’ images (exclusive)

It’s hello (again) on the isle of Capri.

Director Paul Feig is back with another devilishly stylish thriller, Another Simple Favor, a sequel to his 2018 hit A Simple Favor. This time, he’s ditching midwestern suburbia in favor of Italy’s sun-drenched shores.

Newly sprung from jail, socialite Emily (Blake Lively) invites mommy vlogger-turned-private investigator Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) to her glamorous nuptials in Capri. There, the two women reunite as wedding bliss gives way to murder and betrayal. The film will premiere at SXSW next month before hitting Prime Video on May 1.

When last we saw them, Emily had been sentenced to 20 years in jail for the murder of her sister and father, while Stephanie was reinventing herself as a P.I. So, just how did Emily go from an orange jumpsuit to something borrowed and something blue? “You find out in the film,” teases Feig. “But let’s just say she reconnected with an old flame who has a lot of power.”

Stephanie, however, is at a bit of a low point when we return to her life. “She continues to be an amateur sleuth,” the director tells Entertainment Weekly. “She’s in a slight bit of a crisis, but she still does it. She’s just coming through something in that world that backfired on her a little bit. So we’ll meet her not on top of her game.”

Despite his general reluctance to make sequels, Another Simple Favor is a return to some of Feig’s touchstones, both in these characters and the setting. “I resisted doing sequels to any of my movies,” he explains. “But I love these characters so much that I thought, ‘Well, there’s more fun to be had with them.’ But that meant taking them out of their comfort zone.” 

Feig has long been obsessed with the Capri wedding of fashion editor, which he took as a launch point. “I wanted to see Stephanie thrown into this really rich, fancy world and see how she reacts,” he adds.

The filmmaker also has a personal connection to the island, a favorite vacation spot for him and his wife. “Capri was really another character in the movie,” he says. And we’ve been going for at least 25 years every year. So we know the place, we know the people, we know how it runs. It’s both open to the world and insular as far as the locals go. But they’re also very welcoming.”

For the film, Feig liked “the idea of an island that you can’t get off unless you take the ferry or a boat.” He adds, “I called the first movie Suburban Noir. It was a mystery happening in broad daylight. Anybody can do a movie where it’s dark and scary, but if it’s broad daylight and you’re going, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?’ That’s really fun. So, [I loved] the idea of doing something that has a lot of twists and turns in the most beautiful setting where everything’s colorful and beautiful and bright and sunny. It’s a place where you go, ‘Well, nothing bad could ever happen here’ — and lots of bad things happen.”

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A crop of new images, debuting exclusively with EW, emphasizes the beauty of Capri via boat and sports car as Emily and Stephanie arrive. They also showcase Emily’s signature killer style, including a sizable black-and-white hat. 

“There’s a store there that sells a lot of hats,” Feig says. “Blake went in one day and found that hat, and she was like, ‘I found this hat.’ We were just like, ‘We’re in.’ It might be the world’s biggest hat.”

Lively’s wardrobe is markedly different from her suits and pinstripes of the first film, a deliberate choice by Feig and his costume designer. ‘We didn’t want to do the same thing,” he explains. “We made her suit-ing such a powerful thing in the first one because it really matched with the job she was in and the armor that she put around her. We still give our nods to the suits, but also, we are sending her into a very glamorous world. She dresses both to impress and to intimidate.”

Emily’s not the only one with a new sense of style, either. Another image features Kendrick’s Stephanie in a stunning green jumpsuit, a marked change from the twee sweater sets of the first film. “It was a big thing, especially for Anna,” Feig says of the shift. “Stephanie is a little Midwestern mom. You read Vogue and W and all these different magazines and go, ‘That seems like an alien world.’ Stephanie both wants to make sure she fits in, but at the same time, she still brings along who she is. She walks a line — sometimes she’s glamorous, sometimes she’s really dressed down. She realizes she can’t compete with this world around her. She doesn’t have the same money that these people do.”

Feig wanted to ensure all of the cast from the original film could return for this sequel, minus one key character who was recast — the bottles of gin onscreen. Aviation Gin, featured prominently in the first film as Lively’s husband’s brand, has been replaced by Feig’s gin label, Artingstall’s. “There’s no more Aviation,” he declares. “This movie is all Artingstall’s all the time. I’m very proud of my brand. And actually, our bottle is so beautiful that it fits in. It doesn’t feel like it doesn’t belong. There’s never a shortage of martinis in any of my movies.”

In addition to the returning cast, including Andrew Rannells and Bashir Salahuddin, the images also feature a new face — Alex Newell. “Alex plays Stephanie’s book agent, and I’m just a huge fan of Alex Newell,” says Feig. “They were on my show, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. We had this role of this book agent that was pretty funny and thought, ‘Okay, this is perfect for Alex.'”

Another familiar face in these images is that of Henry Golding’s Sean, professor, and ex-husband of Emily, who found himself caught in a love triangle between the two women in A Simple Favor. While Emily’s been in prison, Sean has had custody of their son, Nicky. “Sean has to come to the wedding to bring Nicky to Emily,” Feig explains of Golding’s presence in the film. “He’s a…not happy participant in the wedding.”

Though Emily has clearly moved on, Stephanie also shared an intimacy with Sean. Will she rekindle that flame in Capri? “Anything can happen when what happens in Capri stays in Capri — until you see the movie,” Feig jokes. “But all the old relationships still burn, if you will, one way or the other.”