TV Talk: CMU student stars in ‘Summer I Turned Pretty’ on Amazon Prime

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

In addition to classwork and scene work that’s usual for Carnegie Mellon University drama students, in the spring of 2021, CMU freshman Lola Tung also booked her first on-camera role via a video audition from her Shadyside apartment.

Now, she’s the star and face of Amazon Prime Video’s seven-episode “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” based on the YA trilogy by author Jenny Han, whose “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” was a Netflix hit.

“I had just started working with my manager, who had seen me in a virtual high school showcase that I did,” Tung said of getting an audition for a role that her manager thought Tung would be ideal for. “ ‘It’d be great if you could submit the tapes for it,’ she told me, and I was focused on school, but I said I will absolutely do that. So I filmed the tapes with my roommates, who were also (CMU) drama majors, and I submitted them and then got a call that they wanted me to test for the role a couple of days later. And then I was doing chemistry reads and callbacks (via Zoom) in my Shadyside apartment after classes.”

In “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” now streaming, Tung stars as Belly, an almost 16-year-old girl who spends summers at the beach with her mom (Jackie Chung), brother (Sean Kaufman) and another family that includes teen boys Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney), who Belly has a crush on.

“This is the summer that she is discovering a lot about herself and becoming more independent and finding her own path, and navigating new relationships and old relationships that have new meaning,” Tung said. “I’m only a few years older than she is, and I very much remember these feelings and these experiences. I’m still having these experiences of finding my own path and my own voice and who I want to be and all of that. I think she’s a tad bit more spontaneous than I am and maybe a little more impulsive with the things that she says, but I liked how she can stand up for herself in certain situations.”

Tung, 19, grew up in New York City and was studying drama at the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the city’s “Fame” school, when she applied to CMU.

“I auditioned because it’s amazing, but it was very much a stretch — and then I ended up getting in,” Tung said. But she never got to visit the CMU campus before arriving for classes in the fall of 2020 because of the pandemic. “But when I got there, I absolutely loved Pittsburgh, and I was, like, this was definitely the right choice for me.”

To accommodate filming from July to late October 2021 in Wilmington, N.C., Tung took off the 2021-22 school year, explaining that acting training builds cumulatively, and it wouldn’t have worked to reenter the program mid-stream.

“Because I was not leaving in the middle of the school year, missing a few weeks of crucial training and coming back, they were really supportive,” Tung says, adding that the time she was at CMU proved beneficial for working on this series. “We didn’t do that much on-camera stuff freshman year, but I think everything I learned in my year there, even when I started the audition process, really helped. Not just the acting training, but being independent and being away at school and living on my own and being in a more professional setting where everyone is so passionate about the work. All of it helped prepare me for this and helped with my confidence. I gained so many tools — even in those first couple of months — that I took with me when I was filming.”

Will she return to her studies at CMU? Tung is noncommittal. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” already has been renewed for a second season that will film this summer. And with continued success, they’ll finish out the trilogy with a third season.

“Either way, I’d be happy because the school is so wonderful, but we’re gonna see what happens,” she said.

Tung, who is living back home in New York, did return to campus in April to see “Preludes” and to visit with friends and professors.

She hasn’t taken on an additional role since wrapping season one of “Summer,” as she prepares to promote the show’s roll-out.

As for the show’s title, which taken literally is pretty uncharitable toward Belly, Tung says it’s about something deeper than surface looks.

“It’s not, she was ugly and now she’s attractive and her outward appearance has changed. It’s more going back to the idea of her beginning to find herself and come into her own and discover who she is,” Tung said. “It’s more of an internal shift of self-discovery and growing up, which is so much more than just your physical appearance.”