Joyful to see an Asian-American family on screen: author Jenny Han on 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'

Author Jenny Han says it was exciting for her to work on the series adaptation of her novel ''The Summer I Turned Pretty'' as it gave her an opportunity to depict the life of a contemporary Asian-American family on screen.

Han, a Korean-American author of young adult fiction and children's fiction, is best known for the popular Netflix rom-com film franchise ''To All The Boys I've Loved Before'', based on her books.

''I was really excited for 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'', to be able to tell the story in 2022 and think about how the world looks today and be able to reflect that back on this show. ''Being able to see this Asian-American family on screen that has this lovely summer and has this relationship with each other is also joyful for me to watch,'' the author told PTI in an interview over Zoom.

Summer is a time that allows a teenager to ''play with different versions'' of themselves, she added.

''Summer is a time where as a teenager, you can be somebody else for a minute. When you kind of leave your school life and maybe go to camp or are at home or at the beach, you have a few months to explore. ''It's exciting that when you come back at the end of summer, maybe you've grown up in some way or changed. It just lets you kind of play with different versions of yourself,'' Han said.

''The Summer I Turned Pretty'' follows Belly, a teenager played by newcomer Lola Tung, who goes to an annual summer vacation to their family friends' beach house. At the holiday, Belly reunites with her friends who are brothers, Jeremiah and Conrad, and she finds herself in a love triangle with them.

Tung, who also took part in the interview alongside Han, said she couldn't have asked for a better first experience.

''Working on the show was absolutely incredible... Jenny is just unbelievable and the whole cast was amazing. We all got along so well and had such a fun time filming this,'' she added.

Asked if she hopes to get a career breakthrough similar to Lana Condor and Noah Centineo following the success of ''To All The Boys'' films, the actor said she doesn't dwell much on the aspect of popularity.

''All the other stuff is just stuff that kind of may happen. There's no way we know what to expect. When it all comes down to it, we're just so proud of what we created. We had so much fun,'' Tung said, adding she is looking forward to working on the second season.

While ''To All The Boys'' was made into films, ''The Summer I Turned Pretty'' has been adapted into series.

Courtesy the long format of storytelling, Han said the show gave her an opportunity to expand Belly's world.

''Here, we got to see places visually that you can only imagine in the books and also new characters that we met as Belly's world expanded a bit, because in a book, you're pretty much just in her head,'' the writer added.

As opposed to a movie, Tung said, she was able to spend a longer time with the characters in the series.

''You sort of get into the depths of their emotions, relationships, the character development and everything which was so cool for us as actors.'' Also starring Rachel Blanchard, Jackie Chung, Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno, Sean Kaufman, Minnie Mills and Alfredo Narciso, ''The Summer I Turned Pretty'' premieres Friday on Prime Video.

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