Lola Tung Will Always Have Summer

Lola Tung and I are debating whether we should go for it — and by “it,” we mean order what we really want to eat instead of picking at the kind of small plates typical of Very Important Interviews. “Is it crazy to have a full meal? You talk and then…” Tung says, motioning to her Japanese Breakfast T-shirt, as if she might spill all over it. Shortly after settling into a mid-morning table at Café Chelsea, we decide we’re up for the challenge. But when her platter of eggs florentine arrives, Tung spears a sizable bite onto her fork and starts to second-guess herself. “That’s going to end badly,” she jokes, slicing the piece in two.

The restaurant is located inside New York City’s storied Hotel Chelsea, and the establishment’s lore looms over our breakfast on this early August day. “It’s so nice in here. I feel like I’m on a vacation,” she says, looking around the place. Then she leans in and says conspiratorially, “I heard there are possibly ghosts here. But friendly ones maybe?” Purportedly there are a few — mostly the spirits of guests who died tragic deaths on the premises — but they’re not the biggest mystery we’re concerned with today.

That would be what’s going to happen on the third and final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty. The blockbuster Amazon Prime Video series, based on Jenny Han’s bestselling YA series of the same name, ignites some of the fieriest discourse on the internet. Tung stars as the endearingly messy Isabel “Belly” Conklin, and viewers are waiting with baited breath (and incredibly opinionated TikToks) to see how the most talked-about love triangle of the summer will end: Will Belly end up with the longtime love of her life Conrad (Christopher Briney), who broke her heart at prom, after almost marrying his golden-retriever brother, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), who slept with someone else while they were on a break (twice!)?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tung, 22, says mischievously. This girl’s understandably a vault when it comes to spoilers, and she’s taken to saying she’s “Team Belly” when asked which brother she thinks Belly should be with. Over the past three seasons, she’s learned to stay far, far away from fans’ theories and their screeds over Belly’s choices. “I try not to be online too much because sometimes I can get really heated about stuff,” she says. “She’s just misunderstood! She’s trying to figure it out. Let her live!”

“Everyone should just feel things and stop being afraid of it.”

But the cast group chat does light up with memes about the show’s viral moments, like Belly’s teensy engagement ring (Tung thinks the ring was totally appropriate, by the way) and Easter eggs that seem to hint at what’s to come — even if it’s news to the cast. When I asked Tung if the purple dress Belly wore to prom with Conrad was supposed to be in frame when she tried on her wedding dress, Tung looks shocked. “I had no clue that was a thing,” she admits. “I don’t think that was intentional.”

When Summer ends in September, fans will have their answer, and Tung will say goodbye to the role that transformed her from a complete unknown into one of the most in-demand young actors. Her affection for the series runs deep. A New York City native who attended the famed LaGuardia performing arts high school, Tung landed the role during her first year at Carnegie Mellon University and ultimately dropped out for it. She blew through the three-book series and finished the final page while on the roof of her dorm. “There was a really dramatic single tear that rolled down my cheek,” she says. “I love this world so much. If I wasn’t in this show, I would watch this.”

Because she graduated high school in 2020, right at the beginning of Covid-19 lockdown, filming the first season of Summer in Wilmington, North Carolina, marked her real entry into grown-up life. “I’m like, ‘Season 1 was so much fun!’” Tung says. “But then my mom will remind me that I fractured my foot while we were filming and I ended up getting so sick.” Doctors ruled out mono and the flu but advised her, “‘You literally just need to rest.’ And I was like, ‘I can’t hear that.’” One day when she was feeling particularly garbage-y and overwhelmed, Tung says she started to cry. Then Han — also a showrunner on the series — pulled her aside and advised, “Now would be a great time to start seeing a therapist.” Four years later, Tung is grateful she invested in her mental health before she got famous. “It’s helpful just to be able to talk to someone objectively about everything.”

“I’m not an apps girl. They’ve always scared me, even in my college days.”

She still surrounds herself with longtime friends from elementary and high school, people who knew her before the world of Cousins Beach and whom she can see regularly in New York, where she still lives. When she mentions that she’s been tight with some of them for almost two decades, she shakes her head, amazed. “That’s crazy. I feel like I haven’t said that out loud. They’re like my sisters. I don’t have to worry about what I can or can’t say. I don’t overthink every word or wonder, oh, did I move my hand weird?”

The other day, she says, she and one of her best friends had a “huge conversation” over Skittles and cookies about the importance of loving stuff for the sake of just loving it, instead of worrying it might be dorky or lame. “People do this thing where they’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s embarrassing [that I like Summer because] I’m 30,’ and I’m like, why is that embarrassing? I don’t think there’s anything embarrassing about liking the things you like.”

Tucking her long dark hair behind her ears, Tung says, “A lot of times YA is associated with women and female audiences, and that’s why sometimes it gets pushed aside. Everyone should just feel things and stop being afraid of it.”

So what’s Tung feeling these days? Nothing that would register too high on the Cringe Richter Scale. Baking chocolate chip cookies? Well, that’s just classic. Musicals? Earnest, maybe, but not cringe. Most of what Tung’s into right now happens to be very cool: Reneé Rapp and Lorde’s new albums; Broad City; the Broadway play John Proctor Is the Villain, which stars one of her high school friends, Amalia Yoo. She loves movies and TV shows “where you see flawed human female characters. Sometimes you’re frustrated with them, but you keep watching because you’re like, ‘This is so raw and interesting to watch.’” This applies to Summer, as well as another favorite of hers, Girls. (Tung once met Allison Williams at the Nantucket Film Festival and calls her “the coolest person ever.” “She was talking to me and these people came up and asked her to take a photo of me with them,” Tung recalls. “I was like, what is happening right now? But she was so sweet. She was like, ‘Yes, of course.’”)

“One of my friends was like, ‘I can’t wait until we’re in our 30s!’ But I’m like, ‘Don’t rush it!”

That profile also applies to Tung’s first post-Summer project, Forbidden Fruits, a horror movie about a witchy cult run out of a mall basement, also featuring Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Chamberlain. “They’re all so talented and — I don’t want to say wise, because that makes it seem like they’re so much older than me,” she says of her certified It Girl castmates. “But they have been doing this a lot longer, so they gave me a bunch of advice.”

Tonally, the project couldn’t be more different from the swoony, Taylor Swiftian world of Summer, but like Belly, Tung’s character, Pumpkin, is trying to find out who she is and what kind of place she occupies in the world. “I sat down and talked to the director Meredith [Alloway] for three hours about female friendship dynamics and how the world is not set up for women to succeed,” Tung says, excitedly. “All of these — I was going to say ‘really cool things’ but they're not really ‘cool.’”

That role came to her as an offer sans audition, a somewhat new and thrilling phenomenon for her. “I’m grateful people can see me in other worlds, and I’m also grateful to people’s daughters who show their parents Summer.” She’s pretty sure that’s how she landed the role of Penny Lane in the workshop for a revamped musical adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, a gig for which she spent a few weeks in the woods “playing music, hanging out,” she says. “It was one of the most fun experiences of my life.” And it all happened because Tom Kitt, the composer of the show, learned about Tung from his daughter, who was a fan of Summer.

“I try not to be online too much because I can get really heated about stuff. She’s just misunderstood! Let her live!”

She’s not planning her post-Summer life too carefully, though: Tung definitely wants more musicals in her future (she made her Broadway debut last year with a stint in Hadestown), and to find roles that throw her into the deep end of complicated relationships. Her own dating life, she insists, is far less eventful than what she portrays on-screen. “It’s hard out here,” she jokes. “I’m not an apps girl. They’ve always scared me, even in my college days. My friends would be like, ‘Let’s play Tinder,’ and scroll through their Tinders. I’d be like, ‘OK, I’ll just look over your shoulder.’”

“I’m of the mindset of ‘it’ll happen if it’s right,’” she says, sipping her oat milk cappuccino. “I’m hyper-independent, which is good and also sometimes not great. But some men need more time to grow, which is what we also learned from Summer.” (She’s talking about both Fisher boys, by the way.) “We’re so quick to try to rush things in life. One of my friends was like, ‘I can’t wait until we’re in our 30s and we’re… whatever.’ But I’m like, ‘Don’t rush it! We’re 22. We can take our time.’”

It’s a perspective that Belly — who, by the end of the season, may or may not become a Mrs. Fisher — doesn’t seem to relate to, but Tung has grown to delight in it. Every year, since she was in middle school, Tung has written herself a letter on New Year’s Day to read the following January. “In sixth and seventh grade, I was trying to be all poetic,” she says. “But now I hype myself up in the letters. Like, ‘You’re doing great! I hope you are doing things that make you happy.’ I never know where I’m going to be even next year, so it’s important to hear those words: ‘You’re doing great. It’s all going to be OK.’”

Top image credit: Loewe sweater, Falke tights, Commando underwear, Manolo Blahnik shoes