New York Times bestselling author Jenny Han has joined forces with Amazon Prime Video to treat her fans with a live adaptation of her first published trilogy, The Summer I Turned Pretty, as an eponymous original series. With rave reviews from fans and critics, the show did justice to the iconic trilogy and had debutant Lola Tung bring her on-screen character of Belly alive wonderfully. In an interview with Variety, Han laid bare her thoughts as show co-runner on settling for the perfect cast.
“I really wanted to find actors that felt real and natural, and fresh,” said Jenny Han. “There’s a feeling of discovery about that. The ‘linchpin’ was going to be Belly because everything hangs around her. So, it was the most important for us to find the right Belly. Lola Tung had this freshness to her. She turned 18 on the show. This is our first part and she had never done it before. I think it’s really hard to manufacture a kind of innocence or newness to things. There’s so many meta elements to that — to Belly’s big summer and Lola’s big summer.”
The first season of The Summer I Turned Pretty stars Lola Tung, Jackie Chung, Rachel Blanchard, Christopher Briney, and Gavin Casalegno in lead roles. It is a coming-of-age romance about three young adults navigating their ways through a summer that changes everything in their lives forever. With love, realizations, friendships, parenthood, growth, and self-discovery blended masterfully in the story, the show has touched hearts of millions across the globe. All episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty are streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in India and 240+ countries and territories worldwide.
