The Boys From "The Summer I Turned Pretty" Let Us In On Their Brotherly Bond and What They Hope For Season 2
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*Spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty season 1 below!*
From the author of To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy comes The Summer I Turned Pretty, a romantic dramedy that follows 16-year-old Belly as she discovers herself while getting caught in a love triangle with the sons of her mom's best friend, Conrad and Jeremiah. Every summer, she heads to Cousins Beach with her mom Laurel, her brother Steven, her mom's best friend Susannah, and her two sons. Belly is going through tons of changes this summer as she prepares for Cousins' debutante ball and adjusts to all the new attention she's getting in the romance department. While she's doing that, her brother Steven is navigating his own summer romance and building his college fund with a job at the country club. On the other hand, her besties Conrad and Jeremiah are dealing with their own family drama.
Enter the boys of The Summer I Turned Pretty who have brought Jenny Han's beloved characters to life. Seventeen caught up with Christopher Briney, who plays Conrad; Gavin Casalegno, who plays Jeremiah; and Steven Kaufman, who plays Belly's brother Steven to talk all about the show, how they formed a brotherly bond on and off-screen, and what they hope for their characters in season 2.
17: Jeremiah and Conrad are part of a love triangle with Belly, but they also have a total bromance with Steven. Do you have a similar relationship off-camera?
Sean Kaufman: Oh, so similar. I mean, I love these two to death — they have become two of my closest friends over the past year and I'm extremely thankful for that. I'm extremely thankful to Jenny Han, who flew us out two weeks before we started shooting and allowed us to literally just hang out. I'm very thankful to Chris and Gavin and the rest of the cast, but specifically to those two for being so willing to just be like, "I'm here to connect and I'm here to make friends and become a better person," rather than just do this final product. And man, we've got so much in common. The three of us are crazy. I love them, we still hang out all the time whenever Gavin's in New York.
Christopher Briney: I think those two weeks were super formative in how smoothly the rest of the show was able to go. Immediately I just clicked with all of them — with Sean, with Gavin, with David, with Lola, with everybody. It was an immediate sort of friendship that you don't always feel, because there's a difference between being friends with your coworkers — which is a great thing — and then being friends with people [outside of work]. I talk to Sean probably everyday and I talk to Gavin as much as I can. Being able to not have to make up [these relationships] as an actor helps a lot.
Gavin Casalegno: So, it's a funny story, actually. I was just chilling in my sweatpants, hanging out in my apartment. Next thing you know, I hear a horn honk and Sean is screaming at the top of his lungs. I hadn't met him [in person] yet, I just know what he sounded like on Zoom. And I was like, "Oh no," and that pretty much set the tone for the summer. I mean, I got in the car and we immediately went to the beach and just started talking, hanging out, getting to know each other and they're just beautiful people in their hearts, man. It was a lot of fun just translating our off-screen relationship with the one we had in front of the screen. It was just so special to be able to grow with [the cast], they're all just such talented and kind people.
17: Steven keeps his guard up to keep up a strong persona around his friends and family, but we see him grapple with his emotions when it comes to his sense of self and connection with Shayla. Sean, how does it feel to portray such vulnerability when historically, emotional men have been shamed by society?
SK: Earlier in the series, Steven's progression goes from someone who tries really hard to fit in. He has this sense of FOMO. All of a sudden his two best friends are going after his sister and it's like, "What's going on?" He's also in the process of becoming a man and in that, he thinks that he needs to be tougher, put his guard up more in order to do that. Throughout the series, he starts to slowly learn this beautiful lesson that that's not what it takes to be a "man." There's nothing to it, other than truly becoming yourself, whoever that is. For him, it just happens to be that Shayla really brings out this beautiful vulnerable side of, "Oh, I can love someone. I can feel these things and be unapologetic about it," By the end of the first season, he is still figuring himself out as he makes lots of mistakes throughout the entire series. But he definitely comes into himself a little more.
17: Gavin, how does it feel to represent the LGBTQ+ community and play a queer character where the focus isn’t entirely on his sexuality or hardships?
GC: That's where I think Jenny did a beautiful job with her writing and not making it something that was like, like every [part of the character]. It wasn't everything — it was just a nice little treat on the side and I think it really just goes to show how amazing Jenny is with updating her work and bringing it to today's world, because it's so different now. Honestly, I was so honored to be a part of that change and that direction of where we were taking it and [bringing] that diversity. And I think it's so important to have that. I think it's so special. Jeremiah is always he's figuring out, more and more, who he is and that's just a part of him. It's a beautiful process, and I just have Jenny to thank for that completely.
17: The Fisher brothers go through a lot over the course of the series — Conrad seems to be in a rebellious phase where he copes with drugs and alcohol while Jeremiah is making his rounds in the romance department this summer. How did you tap into the emotions of each character?
CB: I found out I was cast in March and we didn't start filming till July, so I had a lot of time to work on [becoming Conrad] because it took me a while. I read the book and I read the script and I was like, "Conrad, why don't you just tell somebody how you feel? Why don't you just ask for help?" And then I had to backtrack and be like, "Okay, he's 17, he's an older brother. He's used to having a lot of weight on his shoulders and being the strong man in the family, especially with his dad being who his dad is. He just needs to learn." I think when I understood that he had a lot to learn, it freed up the chance for me to be like, "Okay, you can make mistakes. Now you can say things you shouldn't say and be mean whether it's intentional or not."
GC: I was really similar to Jeremiah when I was in high school. I started reading old journal entries and kind of [got to] a space of where my priorities lied and what I thought was important back in my day. I just really had to take a step back into my past and be like, "Okay, what was important to me?" That's the beautiful thing about this show, is that there's a character for what everyone went through when they were a teenager [whether it's reflected through] Steven Shayla, Belly, Taylor — I feel like there's a character that can be personal to everyone and I just so happened to get lucky with Jeremiah and it was just so much fun digging up the past and bringing it forth into what was Jenny's beautiful creation.
17: Jeremiah is extremely tactical when it comes to making a move on Belly. Gavin, what’s the most elaborate gesture you’ve made with someone you were into?
GC: I'm kind of a hopeless romantic myself. I'm all about it. I think the craziest gesture was when my current girlfriend had her 16th birthday party and I had only spent like a week with her at that point. I lived in Texas at the time and she was inviting all of her friends to the party, and at this point, I was already talking to her parents. I secretly bought a plane ticket out to go surprise her for her 16th. Her parents brought her to some restaurant at Universal Studios and I jumped out of the corner and fake proposed with a Hershey's kiss. Little did I know her dad was standing right there, and so that was the first time meeting him. It was hilarious. We laugh about it now, but I haven't found a length that I wouldn't go to make a romantic gesture. So you never know. We'll see.
17: In episode 6, we witness Conrad have a panic attack while sailing with Cleveland. How did it feel capturing something that so many people deal with in real life?
CB: The director of that episode, Erica [Dunton], she's really fantastic and we talked a lot about like the physicality and the aesthetics of a panic attack so that I could worry about the emotional side of it and just know what the physical thing is. I'm sure it's so different for everybody. I'm not trying to say that the only way you can have a panic attack is on a boat and kicking some wood, but it's a hard thing to do. It's delicate because the worst thing imaginable is making a mockery of something serious when you're trying to represent it. When you're representing a man dealing with his emotions, you don't want to be making a mockery of it and you don't want to be playing at an idea of like, "I'm sad now. And it's okay." I just hope that comes through.
17: Chris, what was it like working with Lola and building the relationship of these characters who have such history?
CB: Lola's fantastic, she's really wonderful to work with. She's so kind and so talented. What was really nice is that it was really new to both of us. I mean, technically it was my second acting job and it was her first, but it was our first TV role, our first adaptation with the weight of fans. It really felt like we were making something for an audience, which can be really scary. To have someone like Lola who is really cool about it, and to talk about it like, "I'm kind of scared right now," or like, "Why isn't this working?" Being able to be friends about it in between takes, like, "I didn't like that one," and then she's like, "No, you're fine. That was great. You're fine." It just meant a lot to have her there.
17: Do you have any favorite on-set memories together?
SK: The very last day of shooting, Gavin and I were doing the escort dance with a bunch of wonderful background dancers and it was really so much fun. And then [the cameras] finally got off our coverage and went to Chris or Lola or someone else. I remember Gavin asked the background, he was like, "Hey, can this just be for me and Sean? Can us two just do this dance?" I started to tear up when they played the music and it was just me and him on the dance floor, just having the time of our lives dancing. No camera on us. You know, it was the perfect, perfect, perfect ending to a perfect summer. It really felt like that.
17: What do you hope for your characters in season 2?
SK: I know absolutely nothing about season 2. I do know that Steven and Shayla's story to me was very special and it ended very much with this beautiful bow. I think that there's some great things coming up for Steven. Now, he's going off to college and all of a sudden, with Susannah and everything, the summer fairytale that happened at Cousins is broken. It's shattered, it's gone. I really would love to see how that kind of break or shift of complete tones of the show affects Steven and Shayla's relationship going into season 2.
CB: If I had scripts, I would tell you so it's good they haven't given me any yet. What I'm really excited for is the world to sort of be shattered a little bit because it's almost a fairytale ending. Like, it sort of is in some ways. I think what the show does so well and will continue to do so well is be like, "This is a fairytale, but it's also just the real world." And as much as Conrad has changed, he [still] has a lot more to grow. He's still becoming a person, he hasn't even gone to college yet. You know, I can speak for myself. Like, college is very formative in the person I am [in real life]. You change a lot in those four years, so I'm just excited for the, show to admit that there's a lot more story to tell. I like the book, so I hope it follows it a little bit.
GC: I'm just excited to see what Jenny's brain can concoct for season 2. There's freedom in it and there's also a sense of weight of wanting to smooth out the edges with how season 1 ended, since it was pretty all over the place. Emotionally, I went on a roller coaster and I think it'll be fun just to kind of smooth out the edges and figure out more of who Jeremiah is and who he thinks he is, and more of what Conrad thinks he is and deepening those relationships. Because I mean, season 1, [the brothers] had such a good relationship. So season 2, it's just gonna be so much better and it'll be fun.
Parts of this interview have been edited and condensed for clarity.
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