- 9 hours ago
'The Summer I Turned Pretty' writer, director and showrunner Jenny Han sat down with THR's Mikey O'Connell for a discussion about the Prime series in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
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00:00i am thrilled to be joined by jenny ha today the creator showrunner of summer i turned pretty
00:12who wrote and directed the episode you just saw
00:15all right we just watched episode five of season three last dance you wrote
00:29and directing his directorial debut yes it was um walking through that decision this episode
00:38had to mean something to you for it to be the the interest i think um i was really excited to be
00:44able to really dig deep into um conrad's point of view and i think he as a character has been
00:53somewhat obfuscated um throughout because we're really seeing him through belly's eyes
00:59and and so maybe therefore to the audience as well and he is um it's really i think complicated and
01:06busy inner life um but he is not super expressive um in real life so when really it was fun to be able
01:15to um dig into that and be able to show um sides of him that we haven't really seen and um i think
01:24especially doing the boys of the birds right here was really fun what were some of the like visual
01:30inspirations for you like this is your first time directing or what filmmakers when films were you
01:38thinking i was thinking um fear of life and i know it sounds very random um but i think
01:47yeah i wanted a certain kind of dreamy quality um to
01:52and it's really maybe you and also the way that he looks at her you know and i think
01:57the way he sees her in his eyes um you see how precious that she is to him how beautiful she is
02:04how dear and um i think often feels like you're in a memory and that's why i want the show to be
02:11as well that feeling of nostalgia i think you're very successful oh thank you uh what was your
02:18what was your main note to christopher for this because obviously this is so much about him and as
02:25you said it is a very different light that we're seeing him in this episode wow that's a really good
02:29question um okay i would say one of the notes um i gave during the peaches scene um was for him to
02:39memorize her face in that moment um and you know for that whole day to almost be like i was like
02:49you're like the frog that's like in the water that's just like slowly being cooked you know when
02:54you're saying and a little bit you're or it's like um you know like um a mafia movie you know like
03:00like um heat you're like just one more one more heist and then i'm out of here you know what i mean
03:04and it never really works out that way um for like an old um west movie right and then uh but
03:13throughout the day he those walls kind of keep being um he's trying to put a lot of them and she's
03:20kind of bringing them down and has this way of like disarming him um so that was the note i gave
03:26him this you're the frog those covers sound insane but having watched it like that makes sense
03:31that's next oh i'm glad um yeah that was the kind of dramatic bore that i had and i'm like here
03:38this is a book stage you're acting that um journey and um the when it worked there we can't talk about
03:47an episode of this show without talking about the music so tell me about some of those choices
03:52well this was exciting for me because um you know the show is really through belly's eyes
03:58and so that's the music as well everything um is kind of like through her filter and so it's going to
04:05be music that resonates for her but this is the opportunity to show or shed the light on on conrad
04:12and so then i was able to use um music that i had used on my show before odys redding was one of my
04:18favorite of musicians and then i used um two of the songs in the episode um and then also some
04:24classic rock and i gave a little to it in the episode um two episodes prior uh which we ended
04:32episode with radiohead and you're really bored with conrad in that building as he's left at the
04:36restaurant um and that's more of a conrad band um probably because when i was writing the books
04:43um in the sort of early 2000s and so i was thinking of him that somebody liked pearl janitor in my 90s
04:51broadlands uh this is as you were saying an adaptation of your books um and some changes were made
05:00uh in the writer's room for this season what were some of the bigger debates you had about how you
05:06were going to play this out you know i would say yeah i've always loved to take the wild swings at
05:16things and then um i definitely had some ideas for some but then i think one of the things um that
05:26i've always really cognizant of is that people can be very critical of like young women's choices and
05:32female characters um i think were a lot more forgiving when it comes to um flawed male characters
05:39and so i was often thinking about um belly and how you know i still wanted people to be on her side
05:46and to love her and um to forgive her so that she could ultimately forgive herself um but yeah she does
05:54she's a flawed person who makes mistakes but i think all of them do um and uh that was really important
06:01to me for the show to feel like real people who miss out they're also so young
06:07who's very is that yeah i mean she's a teenager drew drew must have again um you have adapted your own
06:17work and you have had your work adapted yes i'm wondering what are you know if something like the
06:23biggest pro and con but like what is a pro to adapting your work and what is a con to adapting your
06:29own work oh is um it's yours um and i mean it's partly why i was i did tb for this rather than film
06:41um for one reason because i really wanted that wide expanse of time um to really be with these
06:50characters and have um you know built their world and really it's character driven you know is that
06:58it's it's one of the challenges making something like this feel really high stakes because it was
07:03just like people living their lives it's not um you know apocalypse or like zombies or um war
07:10you know but it's it's love and it is death and it is family and um i think i'm really going off
07:17course of what you were asking me now oh you're saying blind oh true blind yeah um i was saying okay
07:24yeah so so tv is is more of a writer's medium and film is is more of a director's medium so um that's
07:33why i would yeah was there any drawback to adapting your work no no no i know i love it i like it i like
07:43you know having a final day and it's really easy in some ways because the story is always um my compass
07:54you know and um rainbow stars is is serving the story even if i'm going to take um personal hits
08:01or if the characters take hits we all take hits but it's in service of the story yeah um so in that way
08:08it's easy i mean in taking the hits you you are a unique individual in that you have sort of become a
08:17celebrity showrunner like you are you're you're a known commodity at this point i think because i
08:23was author first and how um i already had a relationship with my audience i think if you're
08:30an author it's a much more intimate relationship yeah um i think people it's really interesting
08:36because i was i was listening to a podcast a couple of writers friends of mine have um today and they
08:41were talking about how people often think of authors and like the same as like musician or
08:47other kinds of creative people but they're it's really not because um authors are running their
08:53own social media and they're going to small like book signings and events and it's not the same as
09:00being someone very far away from from your audience i mean it's still such a bigger platform that you
09:07have now did you like how have you navigated that personally it'd be sort of being like as much of
09:14a person that people want to talk to on the red carpet for your finale party as your cast it's
09:20definitely you know it wasn't adjusted because um when to all the boys of blood before it came out
09:26um that was you know had a very large audience also and so it went from being an author and then
09:34suddenly like millions of people i'd seen the movie and knew about the story and then um just
09:41feeling much more like kind of visible um i would say that's when the shift happened for me and
09:48sometimes i do think oh it would be nice um when i see showrunner friends of mine who like you know
09:53most of the people don't know who the showrunner is a show that they would make their favorite show
09:58um and i think there's something that might be a little enviable about um having that anonymity um
10:04or i certainly hear some people when they're not happy about something but then you also um
10:11get all the love too so it's it's it's something it's like it's about it but you're all frustrated
10:19when you're dealing with some of the social media stuff in this season knowing that you really in the
10:25end we're going to make everyone happy i mean i know people i i i thought that the finale was so
10:31well received oh thank you um yeah i think it's it's people are used to more instant gratification
10:40where you're able to watch the whole thing at once so you're not sitting with that tension
10:44um for weeks and that anxiety and i really think that people's upset feelings were the anxiety of
10:50not knowing what was going to happen and not being used to that experience um the way that you've
10:55now usually you just watch the whole thing in one go and so it's something um getting to that level of
11:03of fervor um but i don't know i think i i try to be um more offline and yeah well it's good i think
11:16the weekly um it's great in that you have you know it was seeing all the the viewing parties people
11:23were at bars and people were really celebrating it and to me that was like the most special part of
11:28the experience for me is seeing community around the show and seeing like families watching it
11:34together or like um i saw people like going to college for the first time when they were watching
11:39it in the dorms and like sports teams were watching it and like that's amazing um and but i think it's
11:47also certainly for me as the creator easier when it all comes out at once it doesn't need to see it
11:56that like everything's like the onslaught is one and die but i mean not to shade any business models
12:03but like you i don't know that you would have had this level of like cultural saturation if there
12:11hadn't been like a 10 week period leading up to this finale it was huge i think i think yeah and i
12:19think that that's how i like to watch tv2 because truly you know we spend for this this this was
12:27like two years of my life just this season but then certainly all the years since i wrote the books
12:35you put a lot of time and like um effort into the show that you're making and then i think it does
12:41feel a little bit like i don't know it's like when people watch really quickly and they like love it
12:45or however they feel about it and then um people like hey what's what's next what's the next thing
12:50coming out and so that's to me allows people to sit with it a little longer and um i want to savor
12:56it like you spend all day cooking and then people come in and they eat it in 10 minutes and then like
13:00it's over it's like no you i want you to sit and enjoy and we'll course it out and like
13:05have an experience yeah and don't look at your phone while you're eating
13:09although i think people for that i'll say that this audience is special in the way that i think
13:15they do pay really close attention to everything and um appreciate like the little details
13:22the audience from what i've heard and i feel like from what you've told me uh is
13:28pretty split like gen z millennial um in a similar respect i think so i think um some of the data that
13:37came out was i mean it is pretty even yeah i think i know you're not like into market research but
13:46have you noticed any difference in the way that those two audiences sort of engage with the material
13:53you know what yeah um i think that i've noticed that um women sort of
14:02from 40s and 50s um tend to look at belly with a lot of um grace and um say that they look back on their
14:13own experiences and they think about who they were and i think um they feel like some bondage
14:19work affection um for that young person and i think um it can be i think tougher if you're of
14:25the same age and you're i think always more critical of of your contemporaries in a way um but i also
14:31noticed too with the the viewers who are younger than her i think it's kind of aspirational too because
14:37they haven't right um experience yet what did you know you wanted to do that i think i was thinking
14:44on this last night um it was very early on uh in the writing process season three just because um
14:52you know so season one we had seven episodes season two we had eight and then um we're going to have
14:5810 for season three and then um i asked if we could have one more um really because i guess has
15:06everyone seen the show or is there's some people in here um okay let's just say that um i wanted
15:13to have more time um for belly when she after she leaves i think it's not enough to just to i didn't
15:21want to like hurry her back home i think she needed to see her really really struggle to find her footing
15:28in a new place um and i wanted to really do that justice i think to me it was important to see that
15:34character away from um what she needed kind of like test her mettle so um going back to your question
15:42though um then i said okay well i do think that this feels like complete to me as a story um i think
15:51that there's still a little bit more left on the road but i don't want to have it on um to the end
15:59of the season because it's a new story um but it's also not a story that i feel is enough to do
16:06for the eight or ten episodes of um and i think we we the writers we the act the actors everybody
16:16in the crew gave it are all the season i think um kind of left it all on the field and so i would
16:22want to do anything less for another season i really want it to be um you know just as great
16:28and so um i didn't want to do more i wanted to like keep it to the three so when you wrapped did
16:36everyone know that there was going to be a movie like what or was everyone like crying we're not
16:42going to cry we're going to work together again we kind of had a couple of wraps so we had a wrap
16:47in north carolina where we um filmed cousins and then we had our our like final wrap in paragus
16:53um so we were really lucky to have like two great crews that we worked with uh this season and no
17:01nobody except um the not even kind of the actors you know but that's it and everyone has is also very
17:10good keeping secrets what was i mean that's a dwell on secrecy i'm just like i'm obsessed with this
17:15it's so rare you know i mean at least it's just by some it's so great and also i'll say too that
17:21i really wanted a big moment um with the announcer of it and so um i had a vision and um that hang
17:30that prone video was those like tiffany does here tonight tiffany raise your hand i was like here are
17:36all my like wishes and hopes and she was like say love i got it i was like i want the the finale to be
17:41like can't i want it to be like really great i really want to like you know have this this big
17:47moment for the cast and for the fans and i wanted to have that marquee that says the right turn pretty
17:54but then after the episode ends we're we kind of went out like i think 15 minutes before
18:01the end of the episode to take the photo and then i want the marquee to change and say so much pretty the
18:07movie the craziest thing about it though was that there were so many fans outside but they were all
18:11focused on looking at chris and lola taking the picture that nobody was looking at the marquee
18:16and so we didn't get scoops we had literally minutes um i'm sitting there with tiffany in her
18:20laptop and she's like okay what's what are we what are we like what switch picture and i'm like that one
18:25go and they're going to blast it out to all the new outlets i thought it was ai
18:29and i'm like no like no i'm really i don't even use chat gbt i don't even know what that
18:45site looks like so i'm not into that um i'm not either i've to read your choose one of my favorite
18:51movies and um like gives me my ears dyson original inspiration for the movie actually
19:04reference in the book yeah well i think we um we ended up showing a little speed
19:11you know in the um the other show yeah um and i forget what the reason was that'd be
19:18to do from here but anyways that is one of your reviews um um before you wind things down you
19:26you love music so much such a big part of the show is there like a great white whale of a song like you
19:32never got i'll tell you later but honestly you know what though um okay i'll say um harry styles i
19:42really wanted and so um getting hit to song certainly in the season was like very huge and then and then
19:49also the deals um obviously was was huge but i've been so fortunate um in that everything i've wanted
20:01it's happening so like when it comes to music yeah and i'm really lucky i love you're lucky and you know
20:09when i pitched the show i was like music is like a character you know and like it's like the picture
20:14the summer house and you've got these um women who um are you know in their 40s and they're grabbing
20:22on the ox cord and they're putting in their songs and the kids are hearing that and the kids are putting
20:26in their music so i really wanted it to feel like a living breathing space and part of it is in wanting
20:32the show to feel like a memory like you're thinking back to your own um teenagehood so much of uh summer
20:41is about the song of summer you know it's the stuff that you that you hear you two um whether without
20:48you you hear wrong shows of horses and you're remembering where you were and who you were and i
20:54think that was you know important to me to be able to press on those emotions um as you watch the show
21:00you know impressed a lot of emotions in the show oh thank you mikey um well thank you so much
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