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Most acting students attending Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama dream of one day becoming stars of the stage or screen. Few achieve that goal by the end of their freshman year.
Meet Lola Tung, a 19-year-old New York City native and star of the recently released Amazon Prime Video series “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” She plays Isabel “Belly” Conklin, the main protagonist of Jenny Han’s trilogy of “Summer” novels and Amazon’s television adaptation. Belly is a teenager who suddenly becomes the object of fascination and desire during a summer getaway with her mom, brother and close family friends.
Tung booked the role of Belly as a CMU freshman. She told the Post-Gazette it was a “very quick and unexpected” process that involved her sending in audition tapes and participating in chemistry reads over Zoom after coming home from long days of classes. It has all been a whirlwind for Tung, including the last week-plus as reactions to the first season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” continue to roll in.
“Everyone has been very lovely,” she said. “Social media has been a little overwhelming. But I feel very lucky there was already such a wonderful fan base of the books, and they’ve been so kind after the show came out. I think people have been so accepting of the changes and updates, which is really lovely.”
The COVID-19 pandemic making college visits tougher for 2020 high school graduates meant that Tung’s first time stepping foot on CMU’s campus was as an incoming freshman. She was nervous about Pittsburgh being too different from the Big Apple for her to handle, but she was pleasantly surprised by what “a perfect balance of city and suburbs” it turned out to be. She quickly fell in love with campus-adjacent haunts like Shadyside and Schenley Park.
Whether Tung will ever return to CMU is currently “up in the air” due to her production schedule on season two of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” She was able to visit Pittsburgh again a few months ago, and she would love to continue coming back so she can “do all the things I didn’t get to do.” Even if this is it for her time in the Steel City, she considers her year at CMU to have been a more than worthwhile experience.
“I don’t think I’d be where I am right now without my one year at CMU,” she said. “I learned a lot about acting ... and also about myself as a person being away in a different city and learning what it’s like to be in that environment. I learned a lot about professionalism and working with people who are as passionate as I am about acting and theater.
“I take all the tools I got at CMU with me, and I’m very, very grateful for them.”
As someone squarely in Han’s target demographic, Tung was already quite familiar with what “a wonderful storyteller and world-builder” she is. She recalled being in her Pittsburgh apartment and “Netflix partying” the “To All the Boys I Love Before” movies with friends back home.” Tung hadn’t read the “Summer” series before being cast as Belly, although she quickly fixed that and said consuming it that way helped her “to imagine myself going on this journey with Belly.”
Belly has a lot going on during her summer at Cousin’s Beach, most pressingly a bevy of would-be suitors. Those prospects include Belly’s childhood friend, Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno), and Jeremiah’s brooding older brother, Conrad (Christopher Briney). It wasn’t that difficult for Tung, a teenager herself, to tap into the cavalcade of emotions bombarding Belly during this very eventful summer.
“For me, this was my first experience being on a set and working on a TV show,” she said. “We were both new to the scene or whatever the journey was. It wasn’t hard to bring her to life for me because it felt familiar and like we were really growing together as filming went on.”
When asked which love interest she thought was most right for Belly, Tung diplomatically replied that she was “team Belly” and that she’s more invested in “her finding herself and going wherever her heart takes her” than in who ends up being her romantic endgame.
That said, she did have a ton of fun heading down to Wilmington, N.C., a few weeks before filming started to hang out with Casalegno and Briney to develop the distinctive bonds with each of them that she hopes is evident in the final product.
“I think both have such wonderful, unique qualities that I love about them as people that I was able to carry over into filming and make those things things that Belly loves about Conrad and Jeremiah,” Tung said.
At this point in her young career, Tung’s focus is solely on “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” She has no designs on what could come next for her, although she said that women-driven dramedies like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” and Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You” appeal to her artistic sensibilities. Tung is also a “theater kid at heart” and would love to do some stage work as well.
For now, though, she’s just looking forward to slipping back into Belly’s skin and further exploring her story in season two of “The Summer of I Turned Pretty.”
“I’m really excited to continue growing with Belly,” Tung said. “I just think about how much I grew up as a person with her over the last summer, and now I know her so well. I’m really excited to keep doing that and see her mature even more and see whatever adventures she gets herself into.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: June 27, 2022, 4:00 a.m.
Updated: June 27, 2022, 9:54 a.m.
