Who wins the battle for Belly’s heart? The Summer I Turned Pretty stars joke exclusively with J-14 that they “might be biased” when choosing between Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah.
“I’m Team Conrad, bro. I might be biased, but I have to be,” Christopher Briney — who plays Conrad in the Prime Video series, which premiered on Friday, June 17 — explains. His onscreen brother, Gavin Casalegno, notes that they’re in a “tough situation” when picking sides.
“I have to be Team Jeremiah,” the actor — who stars as Jeremiah — shares. “I will say, love Team Cam Cameron (David Iacono). That’s that’s all I’ll say about that.”
When it comes to Belly herself, actress Lola Tung is all about girl power.
“I will forever be Team Belly,” she tells J-14 about her character. “I believe in her finding herself and going on this journey.”
Her onscreen brother, Sean Kaufman, agrees.
“I feel like, I don’t know if I wanna change my answer every interview because I feel like I want to,” the actor, — who plays Steven — recalls. “I flip-flopped so much, but I’m Team Belly and then Team Cam.”
A quintessential summer romance, the show is based on the book series of the same name by Jenny Han and tells Belly’s coming-of-age story as she combats feelings of love between family friends Conrad and Jeremiah.
“I think it was really cool to sort of have his blueprint, I guess, while we were filming,” Lola tells J-14 about creating her own version of Belly. “But then, also recognizing that with the script and everything, it updated a little bit — it was changed a little bit. Jenny [Han] was saying this before, but she always says to her readers — I guess I’ll just take her little line here — that you already have this version of your characters in your mind and that’s yours forever. It, for me, was obviously, I wanna make the readers happy and the viewers happy but I think it’s really important to not try to exactly replicate whatever there is in the book, you know what I mean? Or try to be whatever … I tried to bring myself to the character and make it my own.”
However, the cast didn’t worry too much about how fans would react from the book’s changes.
“I think with our relationship, and with our romantic relationship with Belly, it was so much fun just being able to explore the authenticity of it and the genuineness … just it being so genuine,” Gavin shares. “It was so much fun to work with Lola on screen. I felt like everything just kind of went super smoothly. I know everyone’s gonna love it.”
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