Lola Tung — Summer Kind of Wonderful
For 20-year-old Lola Tung, there was a summer in her life just waiting to happen. Waiting to change the way she would exist in this world and how she’d come to see it. Waiting to alter the path she saw laid out in front of her. That’s life and anyone that has lived it long enough to be retrospective would attest. That summer would come in the year 2021, sometime after her freshman year at the famed Carnegie Mellon school, and it would be the summer that changed everything. Summer would bring many gifts — the most of which would come via a starring role in Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. A screen adaptation of Jenny Han’s Book Trilogy — the first of which was published in 2009.
Now Han, an accomplished writer for both books and the screen by this point, was no newbie to gripping success. I say gripping because of the way the projects she’s involved in have gripped a generation or subset of young people worldwide. Lola and any fan of Han would attribute this to her ability to build worlds with her words on paper. So honest, so connected to a feeling that is fleeting as is our youth. Lola would soon experience both Han as a collaborator and as an individual who believed she was the girl she’s been writing about in her trilogy — of a teenage girl torn between two brothers. She chose her — Lola Tung as the world’s Isabel ‘Belly’ Conklin. Those watching would agree and success would be imminent. Meeting Lola is interesting because although worlds apart from her onscreen counterpart — the essence is the same. She’s kind, polite, and a bit reserved. But she glows in youthful light and girlish mannerisms that feel like facets of Belly. It’s clear why she was cast and why her star continues to rise — and why fans of Han’s stories have fallen in love with her portrayal of this quintessential teenage girl.
Lola Tung wears all by Coach.
Read the full interview, only on The Laterals Magazine Issue 08.
Pre-order The Laterals Magazine Issue 08 featuring Lola Tung below!
Photographer Jingyu Lin / Kramer + Kramer
Art Direction Juliet Vo
Styling Raz Martinez
Hair Dana Boyer / The Wall Group
Makeup Misha Shahzada / A-Frame
Fashion Assistants Celine Azena, Joyce Onuorah, Ines Oom
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