Your new summer’s obsession is now streaming on Prime Video: The Summer I Turned Pretty, based on the Jenny Han best-selling YA novels of the same name. After To All The Boys I Loved Before, Han brings yet another delightful TV adaptation of one of her most famous trilogy. The Summer I Turned Pretty is everything you need if you’re desperate for something fresh, something new, and something that will remind you of your best summer memories.
Jenny Han Interview
We sat down with the incredible Jenny Han, creator and showrunner of The Summer I Turned Pretty. While a second season has already been greenlit, this first season promises to be an absolute joy for the fans of the books.
You can watch the full interview down below:
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However, the writer made some changes to her own story. A debutante ball that didn’t exist in the novel will allow Belly to grow outside her own family and to meet new friends. Even if people aren’t always favorable to changes made to their favorite books, this new story arc was much anticipated by the fans. However, Jenny Han wasn’t sure how this important change would be welcomed:
“I thought some people were loving it, and some people were like ‘ What is this? (…) It wasn’t in the books! ‘ And to that, I just say that for the adaptation, I was really expanding the world a bit, I wanted it to be a bit bigger. To me, it was a great opportunity to show coming of age and to have this kind of ceremonial rite of passage with a ball, and also I think it’s fun to get dressed up!”
One of the things that make this first season so fresh and relatable is the soundtrack: from Taylor Swift to Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, Jenny Han told us that she wanted to make the spectator feel nostalgic, by using recognizable songs that would automatically remind them of the first time they fell in love and of their favorite summer.
Han also explained how casting the perfect Belly was the very first step they had to take in order for everything to fall into place.
“I knew that the most important piece of the puzzle was going to be figuring out Belly (…) we started looking for Belly first, alongside our Conrad because we knew that the chemistry had to be right for those two (…). There was something about Lola that just felt very special to me, from the first time I saw her, there is something so natural and pure and good about her, that, I knew would make a really beautiful Belly that people would root for.”
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