Lola Tung is Growing Up and Saying Goodbye to Summer

Words: Meg Walters | Photography: Ashley Armitage | Video and Fashion: Britt McCamey | Makeup - Misha Shahzada | Hair - Andrita Renee | Set - Tyler Evans Tyler Evans | Production - Seamless Production

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Lola Tung has the rare ability to always say the right thing. In fact, one of the first things she says on our Zoom call is a perfectly poised, efficient apology.  "The construction!" she says kindly, referring to some barely discernible banging. "I'm so sorry for all that noise." Of course, Tung's good manners make perfect sense. Still just 22 years old, she has already spent two years at the helm of one of her generation's biggest pop culture phenomena. Her politeness is, perhaps, a form of self-protection. She was just 18 when she landed the leading role in The Summer I Turned Pretty – a role that instantly propelled her from regular university freshman to stratospheric teen star.

Prime's adaptation of Jenny Han's immensely popular teen romance series is often likened to this generation's Twilight. The show centres around a tense love triangle that unfolds over the course of several summers in Cousins, a fictional New England seaside town. Tung stars as Isabel "Belly" Conklin, a teen who spends her summers with her mother, Laurel, at the beach house of her mother's family friends, the Fishers. Belly has always harboured a secret crush on the older son, Conrad, but after an especially turbulent, hormone-riddled summer, she begins to see his younger brother, Jeremiah, in a new light, too. Of course, as was the case with Twilight, fans are fiercely divided into two dedicated camps of shippers: Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah. A sun-drenched dive into the pining and pitfalls of young love, set to a soundtrack of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, it's easy to see why the show has gone viral on TikTok, and become a beloved symbol of summer for Gen Z. Indeed, if you've been anywhere near social media lately, you've probably encountered videos of their viewing parties, complete with pomegranate margaritas, fresh flowers, infinity necklaces and "good muffins." (If you know, you know.) 

For Tung, the appeal of the show has always been about more than the thorny love triangle with the Fisher brothers – it's been about Belly herself. "I love that a lot of Jenny [Han]'s work centres teen girls and she allows girls to experience all of their feelings to the fullest without making a mockery of it," she says. "Sometimes it can feel like people don't take your feelings as seriously as you do, especially when you're 17 and everything feels like the most important thing in the world. Because it is at that time." All of this was something Tung understood instantly when she first stepped into Belly's shoes four years ago. "I was not far off from Belly's age, so I remembered all of those feelings – I was still in it a little bit," she admits. 

Tiara Earrings And Dress: Simone Rocha | Sheer Socks: Calzedonia | Pumps: Miu Miu

"I love that a lot of Jenny [Han]'s work centres teen girls and she allows girls to experience all of their feelings to the fullest without making a mockery of it,"

And then there's the show's unique ability to evoke the feeling of summer. "It felt very nostalgic," Tung says. "It makes you giddy to tap into that [time]. Even outside of filming, we used to play wiffle ball together, or, you know, just jump in the pool and play games. I had some sort of – not quite a love triangle situation, not quite that," she says, stopping herself mid-sentence. "But I had friends who had a house in Long Island that we would go to every year and hang out for the summer and ride our bikes and go to the beach."

Although Tung may have spent her summers soaking up the sun in Long Island, most of her childhood was spent in the hustle and bustle of New York City. "I was constantly surrounded by art and artists," she says. Her parents were both "pretty artistic people" – her father, of Eastern European descent, had been in a band, while her mother, of Swedish and Chinese descent, had toyed with acting in her 20s. They took her to her first Broadway show when she was just five years old. "I think it was either The Lion King or Mary Poppins," she says. "One of those incredible spectacles that you immediately are just blown away by."

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It wasn't until middle school that Tung, a shy child, mustered up the courage to get on stage herself. "I don't even know what sort of made me do this, but I auditioned for the school musical." She ended up landing the part of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. She fondly remembers wearing a silver jacket her mother had found at a thrift store and a pair of silver rain boots. "I remember just loving every second of it," she says. "And from that point on, it was kind of like, 'This is this is the thing. This is the thing I'm gonna do.'" 

She went on to attend New York's LaGuardia, a high school specialising in performing arts made famous by the 1980 film Fame. "I think just getting to act as part of the curriculum for two and a half hours of the day was incredible," she says, before she quickly clarifies: she was also a good student. "I was very focused on school. I think I had this whole… I was very much focused on education and getting good grades and staying in class." 

Dress: Yuhan Wang | Pearls: Vivienne Westwood | Earings: Simone Rocha

Tung's determination to act took her from LaGuardia to Carnegie Mellon's acting program, but she was only there for one year before her life was turned upside down by The Summer I Turned Pretty. Nevertheless, it was a formative year. With a big smile, she proudly shows me she's wearing her Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt.."It was great," she says, before adding that it was "also very weird" as she happened to join in the midst of COVID, which meant half of her classes were online. " "But," she quickly adds, "I still think that entire year was incredibly beneficial." I sense she is being carefully polite again. Everything changed when her manager reached out with the audition for Summer I Turned Pretty.After a series of Zoom auditions, she landed the role. She devoured the books on the roof of her apartment, put her degree on hold and set off to film in Wilmington, North Carolina. She was nervous, but the set couldn't have been more welcoming. "It was just like kids hanging out – it was very much like summer camp," she says.

Dress: Simone Rocha | Earrings: Justine Clenquet | Sheer Socks: Calzedonia| Pumps: Yves Saint Laurent

The cosy bubble of the set couldn't last forever. After the first season landed in 2022, Tung became an overnight superstar. "It was wild," she recalls. "It was weird adjusting to people coming up to you on the street or your social media following all of a sudden, becoming more than just your high school friends and your mom." 

Tung, who now boasts almost four million Instagram followers, maintains a careful and measured social media presence, keeping her content vaguely distant and professional. "Social media is really hard for me," she admits. "It's very anxiety-inducing. Even when it was just my friends following me, I'd be like, 'Should I post this?' It's hard to feel like you're doing the right thing or posting the right thing or writing the right caption or liking the right thing." These days, she prefers to stay offline "as much as possible."

Ever the diplomat, however, she adds thoughtfully, "But there are good things. I love getting to share the work that I'm doing. I know that there are a lot of really awesome fans who follow me there."

"It was weird adjusting to people coming up to you on the street or your social media following all of a sudden, becoming more than just your high school friends and your mom." 

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This year will be our third and final summer in Cousins with Belly and the Fisher boys. In the show's final installment, we'll see Belly and Tung at their most mature. "I'm 22 now and it's really cool to look back on season one, and be like, 'How we were so little and we didn't know anything?' She was a teenage girl just figuring shit out – and that's what we're all trying to do. And I just look back with so much love."

And what will Tung take away from her time as Belly? "One thing that I've taken from her – besides the new found love for the beach – is confidence," she says. "She has an ability to say what's on her mind, even if it's a little confrontational, she'll say what she's thinking. And sometimes it ends badly, but sometimes it's something that really needs to be said."

Tung, it turns out, knows that she has a tendency to try to say and do the right thing – and apparently, Belly has helped her begin to let go of it, just a little. "I think I tend to keep things in order to not cause any problems. I've always felt like I have to leave everything super neat and clean and wrapped up with a little bow," she confesses. "I never want to mess anything up or take any risks. But that's not living life. You have to take risks – sometimes really, really good things come out of it."

"I'm 22 now and it's really cool to look back on season one, and be like, 'How we were so little and we didn't know anything?' She was a teenage girl just figuring shit out – and that's what we're all trying to do. And I just look back with so much love."

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With her final summer in Cousins on the horizon, Tung is looking forward to whatever comes next. She took on a supporting role in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel, her first film, due for a summer release alongside Summer I Turned Pretty. Last year, she also made her Broadway debut stepping into the role of Eurydice in Hadestown – a dream role, she says. "I couldn't have asked for a better Broadway debut. It was really special and really took me back to being that 12 year old on stage in my little Tin Man costume," she says, her eyes lighting up. "I'm on this total theatre kick. And I just want to keep doing more of it, because I love it so much."

But that's not all. "I've discovered this love for TV. I'd love to do a film that would be really cool," she says giddily. "I'm just like anything and everything. Really, like, anything. I'm there.”