From Gen Z to Millennials: Why audiences can’t get enough of this summer romance streaming hit
At first glance, teen romance series The Summer I Turned Pretty is your fairly typical coming-of-age story. There’s a gripping love triangle between its three photogenic leads. There’s pining, heartbreak and many a first (kiss, boyfriend, love).
Yet, the show has been nothing short of a global phenomenon. Now in its third and final season, it’s Amazon Prime Video’s most-watched TV show globally among women in the 18-to-35 age group.
Belly (Lola Tung), Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), Conrad (Christopher Briney), Steven (Sean Kaufman), and Taylor (Rain Spencer) in season three of The Summer I Turned Pretty.Credit: Erika Doss/Prime
Its appeal is simple, says Jenny Han, who wrote the books on which the series is based and is creator of the TV series. “It’s aspirational,” she says. “I think partly why people connect to it, too, is that many people have had a romance at the beach or felt strong feelings for somebody who maybe didn’t return them and those things to me are across generations and time.”
Han is in Sydney with two of the show’s lead actors, Lola Tung (Isabel) and Rain Spencer (Taylor), as part of the streamer’s Prime Book Club Live event, which is celebrating the success of several of the streamer’s book-to-TV adaptations. The series follows Tung’s Isabel (or “Belly”, as she is affectionately referred to), a young woman caught in a love triangle with brothers Conrad and Jeremiah.
Rain Spencer, Lola Tung and Jenny Han in Bondi on Tuesday.Credit: Prime Video & Scott Ehler
Largely set against the pastel-hued backdrop of the boys’ family’s beach house, and scored heavily by hits from Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, it’s a different breed of teen media to the more explicit portrayals of sex in shows such as Euphoria and Sex Education, which are heavy with grit and teen angst.
While The Summer I Turned Pretty is hardly short on drama, its take on adolescence is decidedly more saccharine.
“Fantasy is such a big part of reality now,” says Tung. “Thinking about having a crush is fantasy, you know?”
Han, a former children’s librarian, wrote The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy between 2009 and 2011. Over a decade later, it was picked up by Amazon and the series quickly became a hit, particularly among Gen Z and Millennial women.
On social media, videos by the show’s leads garner millions of views, while fans make their case for which boy is “endgame” for Belly (are you Team Conrad, or Team Jeremiah?).
What do Tung and Spencer, 22 and 25 respectively, make of Gen Z’s approach to love? Are they, as many a media headline suggests, having less sex, or opting out of dating entirely?
“We’re complicated, this generation,” says Spencer.
Adds Tung: “I feel like it’s kind of split ... there’s this side with dating apps where it’s easier to meet people but there’s less connection.”
The show is emblematic of the broader explosion of young adult content in recent years.
Netflix’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before film series was also adapted from Han’s bestselling 2014 novel of the same name. Its first instalment remains one of Netflix’s most-viewed original films and was groundbreaking at the time for placing an Asian actor (Lana Condor) as its romantic lead.
Bestselling author Jenny Han and creator of hit series The Summer I Turned Pretty.Credit: AP
In The Summer I Turned Pretty, Han originally wrote her protagonist as white, having been previously rejected by publishers with a pitch for a different novel with an Asian lead. But she rewrote the character to be half-Korean for the television series (Tung herself is half-Chinese).
“What makes it relatable is it does feel very universal,” says Han. “This is a girl and she’s Asian-American and I think, for me, I always want to be thought of as a writer, and [race] is part of my identity but it’s not the whole of my identity.”
Han’s ability to transpose the tumultuous love lives of today’s youth to the page and screen has earned her the moniker, “Gen Z’s Nancy Meyers”.
Still, its viewership shows it’s just as popular among women in their teens as it is with women in their mid-30s.
“For the show, I really went into it wanting and hoping for an audience of all ages,” says Han. “I wanted people who were adults to watch it and remember how it felt to have really strong feelings for somebody and relive that for a moment, because [young adulthood] is a really intense and powerful time in a person’s life.
“I remember saying in my pitch when I went out with it, I wanted the show to be [like] pressing on memory.”
The Summer I Turned Pretty (season three) is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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