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Imagine scoring your very first professional audition, booking the role, and then headlining a highly anticipated Prime Video series that debuts to strong reviews and a warm embrace from viewers. That’s exactly what happened to newcomer Lola Tung.
Tung is the star of the latest Jenny Han adaptation following the To All the Boys film series on Netflix. This one is The Summer I Turned Pretty and it features Tung as Isabel Conklin, aka Belly. Belly spends every summer at Cousins Beach with her family and their close friends the Fishers. She’s always been the youngest of the bunch, the little sister to her brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) and also to the Fisher boys, Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). Yes, it’s a loving environment to grow up in, but that kind of connection and coming-of-age awkwardness hasn’t really done much for Belly’s crush on Conrad. However, this summer is different. This is the summer Belly “turned pretty.”
Tung shines in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 1, and she’ll get the opportunity to do so again in the near future because Prime Video has already given the series a Season 2 go-ahead. On top of that, given what she manages to accomplish in her on-screen acting debut, one’s got to imagine the possibilities for Tung are endless, making her a perfect guest for our new Collider Ladies Night spinoff series, Pre-Party.
Just in case you missed our first episode with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’s Lily Sheen, Pre-Party is a series under the Ladies Night banner designed to highlight some of the industry’s most exciting new talent. If you’d like to get to know stars on the rise before they amass mile-long filmographies, Ladies Night Pre-Party is the interview series for you!
Tung’s itch to act first kicked in while playing the Tin Man in a school performance of The Wizard of Oz. But what comes after the realization that one wants to become an actor? What’s the first step to making that a reality? It’s always worth noting that every path in this industry is different, but this is how Tung felt out the situation and pinpointed what was best for her:
“I think for a while when I started acting, especially in middle school, I was like, ‘This is something I really want to do, but, you know, I also have other interests because I’m 12 or 13-years-old and I’ll explore those a little, too.’ And then I think when I realized that was the thing I loved most, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna continue to go to school for this and make this sort of my main focus I guess.’ So that’s when I went to LaGuardia High School in the city for drama and then I was studying drama every single day — you know, we had our other required classes as well, but I think that’s when I started to be like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna keep training and trying to learn more and learn from my peers and teachers, and try to get as much theater experience as I can, and see more theater because it’s so important to see other artists. I was so fortunate to be able to see so much live theater living in New York City. But yeah, it was just about watching other artists do their thing and then me sort of continuing to work on my craft as well.”
That approach to honing her craft proved effective because it helped Tung catch the eye of a manager via her virtual senior showcase performance:
“At LaGuardia there’s usually a showcase for the drama students at the end of the year who have an interest in continuing acting after high school. Usually it’s in person, but we sent in videos. I was in my bedroom filming a monologue. And usually I think a couple students get responses and start working with different people, but it was really funny because my manager had reached out to me a couple months after the showcase had happened. I was in my second semester of my first year of college actually and she reached out to me and sort of wanted to start working together and had this audition.”
That audition? It was for The Summer I Turned Pretty. So not only was Tung’s very first professional audition a great opportunity all on its own, but then she actually went on to book the role, jump-starting her career in one of the best ways imaginable. However, while scoring the role of Belly was likely a huge thrill, it did mean Tung was about to step into a rather significant production with no experience. Good thing she had two vital pieces of advice in her back pocket:
“To take care of myself. To make sure you’re really taking care of yourself and to just be present and in the moment and doing the work and being there, and enjoying it. And it goes by fast and it can be very long days and very long hours and it can be stressful sometimes, obviously, but I think I was so lucky to be surrounded by such incredible people and actors. I really had to not be in my head and just live in that moment and soak it all up. And also take care of myself! Get a lot of sleep because I think it can be hard, especially when you’re in bed and go into the little social media hole in your phone and then all of a sudden it’s one o’clock in the morning.”
Fortunately for Tung, there was someone on the set of The Summer I Turned Pretty who could help her shake off that late-night social media scrolling. Here’s what Tung said when asked for a technique she saw a co-star use that she hopes to apply to her own work in the future:
“Sean, who plays Steven, my brother, he always does his morning stretches and always will carve out the time, maybe like 15 minutes or so to have a whole little warm-up routine. I think it’s the acting school in him. But it’s so great, and I did it with him one morning and I feel like I get so easily distracted and it’s such a good way to ground yourself, and I was like, I need to start doing that more often.”
Tung is clearly brimming with natural talent. After all, she booked her first professional audition and then went on to prove she was the ideal fit for the role of Belly Conklin. But, of course, there’s always opportunities to continue growing and Jenny Han watched Tung do just that on the set of Season 1. When asked which cast member changed the most from day one of filming to wrapping Season 1, Tung chose herself. Here’s how she put it:
“Maybe me. Jenny always talks about how she looks at pictures of my face on the first day and she says that my face looks different at the end of filming. And not in a, ‘Oh, you look like a whole different person’ [way], but she just says that there was some growing up that happened and she can see it in my eyes or something, which I think is really sweet. And I would agree with that. I think I grew up with Belly that summer.”
Looking for more from Tung, including a little The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 tease? You can find just that in her full Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party episode in video form at the top of this article or in podcast form below:
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