Book-to-screen adaptations are all the rage, and The Summer I Turned Pretty is one of the most popular ones out there! Since the premiere of season 1 in June 2022, and then season 2 in July 2023, fans have noticed multiple changes in the show that differed from the original book series, written by Jenny Han. Keep reading to uncover all of the biggest departures from the books so far.
Lola Tung, who stars as Belly Conklin in TSITP, revealed to J-14 that it was “really cool” to have a blueprint such as the original book series when preparing for her role as the show’s main character.
“But then, also recognizing that with the script and everything, it updated a little bit — it was changed a little bit,” she told J-14 exclusively in June 2022.
“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,” she continued. “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.”
Gavin Casalegno, for his part, told J-14 that it was “cool” to bring himself into Jeremiah. “I think we all are very blessed to be able to have an outline in the book,” he explains. “It’s actually very rare. We got really lucky.”
In season 2, two additional characters were added to the series that didn’t appear in the books: Elsie Fisher as Skye, Conrad and Jeremiah’s cousin, as well as Kyra Sedgwick as their aunt Julia.
“We get to create this whole new person,” Elsie told E! News in October 2022 of their season 2 addition. “Part of what really drew me to the project is that I get to play a person that still feels very true to myself, but is different from the kind of character people have seen me play before.”
Sean Kaufman, who plays Belly’s brother Steven, put fans’ minds at ease regarding the faithfulness to the original material.
“Without giving too much away, I think for fans of the books, there’s gonna be a lot of material that’s there to look forward to if they have read,” Sean told TV Insider. “And also at the same time, I think Jenny [Han] does a wonderful job of balancing for people that haven’t read the books and just started with the show.”
Scroll through our gallery to uncover all of the biggest changes from The Summer I Turned Pretty books to the Prime Video series.
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