“My heart is beating so fast,” Lola Tung whispers. The Summer I Turned Pretty star is standing in the hallway at Broadway Dance Center, about to take her first dance class in a while — possibly since her 2024 Broadway debut in Hadestown. But she’s not the only one who's nervous.
You can feel excitement and tension fluttering in and out of classroom doors, mixed with the sounds of Hip-Hop and jazz. Some of these jitters are because dancers have spotted Tung and are debating whether or not to say hi; for Tung, though, it’s because stepping back into a place like this — the mirrored walls, echoing counts — recalls a now distant feeling she once knew well. Rooms like this were where she first learned about physicality and how to move with purpose, before life pulled her in other directions.
For the next hour we’re just like everyone else, theater kids training at a dance school in New York City, working toward a dream. Tung often took classes in this building during her junior year of high school, like any New York-based aspiring theater kid would. She may be nervous, but it’s also clear this environment is something she’s used to. Being here is like brushing up against the edges of who she was and who she has become.
“I don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself,” Tung says, dressed like just another dancer in her blue hoodie, black leggings, and Salomon sneakers. But she’s always been this way; the self-imposed pressure has roots she’s still trying to outgrow.
Tung is now at a turning point. In her first professional project, as Belly Conklin in Jenny Han’s Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty, she was thrown into the experience of leading a hit show, and the end of the series feels like graduating from her own version of college. Her high school best friends marked the moment by surprising her on set last summer with a tiny cap and a red “Congratulations 2024” sash. “They had just graduated from college, so they were like, ‘This is kind of your graduation [too],’” she remembers with a laugh.
As TSITP comes to an end, Tung, 22, will soon cross that crucial bridge from teen-drama star to playing more adult roles. With new projects, including her feature-film debut in Forbidden Fruits, close on the horizon, she’s not slowing down. But she’s also entering a time of change.
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When we meet it’s been a week since the show’s season 3 trailer premiere party at the Central Park Boathouse. She’s a few days away from a jam-packed press schedule leading up to the return of the series on July 16. These are the last moments of relative calm. Many fans, meanwhile, have already begun doing their love-triangle detective work, with everyone trying to figure out whether, in the end, Belly will choose Jeremiah or Conrad Fisher.
In season 3, our favorite Cousins Beach crew jumps ahead a few years in time: Belly is now with Jeremiah, but we’re all wondering if she’ll go running back to Conrad — the love that started it all.
This complicated triangle with Belly and the two Fisher brothers is the crux of a summertime story about first loves, friendship, grief, and growing up. Of course, The Summer I Turned Pretty is about more than just who ends up with who, but the love triangle is undeniably gripping for fans.
“I think we see with a lot of these love-triangle stories, people want the leading girl to end up with someone,” Tung says. “When people have an attachment to the characters, they want to see it come together at the end. I’m so grateful that they care so much, but people get a little scary about it. Please don't threaten to kill someone if something doesn't go your way — I promise you, it's not that serious. Jenny [Han] is so smart and she cares so much about the story and making it the best story that it can be. It will be okay.”
That all-consuming emotion from fans is something that was new to Tung when she was cast as Belly in 2021. You never truly know if the show you’re starring in will become a huge cultural phenomenon, and you aren’t prepared for it — especially when you’re a teenager, booking your first professional gig. It's the reason Han, the show's creator, advised Tung to create space between her career and her personal life.
“I said to protect what is precious and special to you,” Han tells Teen Vogue. “I think that to be creative, you have to hold some stuff just for you that makes you tick and makes you excited to work every day.”
You can see that practice in action on Tung’s Instagram, which is clearly a work account. Almost every post is a photo shoot, promotional image for work, or a shot from a brand’s runway show or dinner party. Her public image is polished; there’s personality, but no oversharing. Though, she does use her platform to support a cause: she posted to her Instagram Stories in support of Zohran Mamdani during New York City's Democratic mayoral primary in June.
Tung's fans say her curated social media presence is because she wants to be seen as a “serious actor.” But when asked if that air of mystery online is intended to help build out her career, Tung shakes her head; it's about self-preservation. She’s an adult Gen Z'er who is perhaps overly aware of her digital footprint — and what too much Instagram does to her mental health.
“It starts to get very overwhelming sometimes,” she says. “There are so many people giving their opinions about you, and it can sort of mess with your head. My mind feels a lot clearer when I don't have social media on my phone.”
Tung likes to connect with her extended family and see what her friends are up to, but all of that ultimately leads to doomscrolling. And she’s careful about how her public presence affects those she’s close to. “At the end of the day, I'm not posting my family. I post my friends, but not all the time because I want them to feel like they have privacy too,” she explains. “I want people to feel a connection to the show and me, but they also don't know me personally, and I don't think anyone owes their personal business to anyone else.”
Tung is aware of her surroundings, hypervigilant even, cognizant of the eyes on her as we wait around a practice room at the dance center. We talk about the levels of theater kids out there, from those who can name super obscure musicals off the top of their head to more casual kids who have been in a few plays. She is somewhere in the middle, not taking herself too seriously, but clearly respectful of the craft. There’s a quiet intensity beneath it all, as if she’s clocking every detail, every moment, holding herself to an invisible standard no one else has asked of her.
For Tung it’s that invisible standard that makes her career both terrifying and thrilling. “Even doing the dance class, it seems so silly, but I get nervous,” she says. “I used to have such gym anxiety, because it scares me. There's this British girl on TikTok, she's a fitness influencer, and she always says, ‘There's nothing I cannot do.’ One day I was like, ‘Yeah, you know what? There's nothing I can't do.’ I think that's why I like theater. It feels like the scariest thing ever when I get on a stage, but I love it. I'm here. I feel alive, and I'm doing something scary, but it also makes me feel something in a way nothing else in my life does.”
During our dance class, our instructor Meloyde asks if we can do the routine without her. We both hesitate. “When I step away, you have to just believe in yourself,” Meloyde tells us. “It's in there anyway, so if I stay there, you're just going to depend on me.”
Tung laughs. “It’s like when I'm using Google Maps to walk 10 blocks,” she says. “I know exactly where I'm going. I'm like, ‘Yes, I hear you, but can we just make sure two plus two is still four?’”
Always being on point can be a heavy burden — a lesson Tung learned the hard way. “With that first season, I wanted so badly to prove that I could do it and make everybody happy and proud,” she says of the beginning of her time on TSITP set. “I never wanted to show that I could ever be weak or struggling. I was like, ‘I just have to be good at this,’ and I was putting so much pressure on myself.”
Tung continues, “I fractured my foot on set and was in a boot for six weeks, and I was like, ‘It's okay, I'm still going.’ I got sick at a certain point and I was like, ‘No, I have to keep going.’” People on set were great and supportive, she says, but it didn’t stop her relentless inner voice.
“I remember I had a day on set where we were rushing between scenes and I just started crying, and I felt so bad,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘I don't want to hold anybody up.’”
Over time, though, Tung learned how to quiet, at least temporarily, that inner voice telling her to keep going at all costs. Han encouraged her to try therapy, which helped Tung prioritize her well-being alongside doing the best work she can. “Thank God I did that at that point in my life,” she says. “Now I think there are times when, in a respectful way, I know how to say, ‘Hey, I'm sorry. Can I take two seconds to just go to the bathroom and collect myself?’”
Does the need to excel in every aspect of her life stem from Tung's high-caliber training while attending two top schools for her craft? The New York native attended the famous Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, whose alumni include Timotheé Chalamet, Sarah Paulson, Jharrel Jerome, and Lara Raj of KATSEYE. The environment is high pressure and competitive, but for Tung, it was also just… school. After high school, she briefly attended Carnegie Mellon University, also renowned for its theater program.
But the question does make her pause, and for a moment, something flashes across her eyes: “I hadn't even thought of that,” she says. “Maybe, subconsciously, it's contributed a little bit.”
Tung says further, “I had this feeling that I was going to let people down if I wasn't this perfect model of what number one on the call sheet should be. With TV and film, you can go back and nitpick every little thing you did and be like, ‘Why did they use that take?’ or ‘I could have done that better, I wish I did this.’ I've had to realize that you have to let go of it at a certain point, but I've always put a lot of pressure on myself.”
She adds, “I don't know where that comes from, but maybe it is this thing of hearing, ‘Well, you're at the best, so if you can't prove yourself, then…’”
It’s also the reason Han tries to ingrain in Tung’s mind that she doesn’t need to apologize for every little thing: “I'm always telling her, ‘Stop saying sorry.’ She'll be like, ‘Oh, sorry! Sorry!’ It's just that impulse — specifically for young women, and women in general — to apologize for taking up space. In such a short time, though,” Han says, “I've seen that growth and maturity from her. I don't even know that she needs advice from me, because I think you can't learn how to be a caring and kind person; people innately have to have that kindness in them, and I think she does.”
Tung doesn’t treat our dance outing like a throwaway class. We’re just a few minutes into the one-off beginner’s musical theater dance session and already she’s laser-focused, pausing mid-step to double check with the instructor: “Wait — right foot first, or left?”
Tung's brows are knitted for a beat as she marks the turn again, her casual demeanor fading and that theater kid immediately revealing herself. The song is “Empire State of Mind” from Hell’s Kitchen, Alicia Keys’ Broadway jukebox musical. As we pa de bourrée toward the mirror, Tung notes that Keys went to her elementary school. She shares this with the kind of offhand pride that's unique to a native New Yorker, because growing up here means that every big light — and fellow primary school alumnus — could, in fact, inspire you.
Tung calls dancing her weakest link, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she attacks each eight-count. After every run-through, she gives me a giddy two-handed high-five, grinning so hard it’s contagious. One moment she’s locked in, eyes darting between the mirror and the instructor’s feet; the next, she’s singing the “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” parts with full-throated joy, bouncing on her toes like she’s having the time of her life.
By the sixth run-through, you can see it — the shift, the click. The version of Tung that is the young kid who fell in love with the stage is right here in the room with us. There’s a kind of magnetism to it; the kind, Han later tells me, that is exactly why Tung made the perfect Belly Conklin. Love triangles are messy. You need someone to root for, someone people can “fall in love with.”
Lola Tung started her journey on The Summer I Turned Pretty at 18, and now she’s ending it at 22. The lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Nothing New” come to mind: “How can a person know everythin' at 18, but nothin' at 22?” Tung squeals at the reference: “That’s going to make me cry,” she says.
“I didn’t feel invincible, but at 18 I was like, ‘The world is my oyster,’” she says. “When we were filming that first season, it was truly like summer camp. We would just hang out together and go to the beach and be like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe that we're getting to do this thing that we love with each other?’ I can't even explain the feeling, but I will always remember it and have those memories.”
Tung continues, “I felt so old and wise, but at the same time, I had so much to learn. I was like, ‘Wow, we're going into the world,’ and now I feel like I don't know anything. I can't even give an answer without saying, ‘I don't know.’ My best friend said to me the other day, ‘Stop saying “I don't know” after everything you say. You do know, ’cause you wouldn't be saying it if you didn't know.’”
When asked if she hesitated before saying yes to Belly, Tung doesn’t miss a beat: “No, it was like, f*ck it. You have to do that. When it’s the right thing, it’s the right thing, and the stars aligned.” She points out that she had just turned 18 — a timing coincidence that made it all possible. “I don't even know if I would've been able to audition if it had happened a year before.”
After our class, we stroll nine blocks in the rain toward the coffee shop Thē Soirēe. Tung scrolls through her phone as we walk, toggling through the Partiful app, deciding whether or not she’ll be able to make it to a birthday party that evening. The “maybe” button has to be her best friend for the next few weeks.
“Lola!” a woman shouts as we walk past 53rd Street. But it's not a fan; a friend of Tung's from high school catches up to us. New York City feels like a small town for the actor. “I ran into my middle school boyfriend on the bus the other day,” Tung says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Hey.’ He was like, ‘Hey.’ And he just started talking about how now he's bouldering a lot.”
Anyway, the friend who shouted hello is doing a play reading soon, and Tung’s mother will be attending. The friends embrace and share sweet goodbyes. As we continue down the street, Tung thinks out loud: “Should I try to attend too? I’m just so busy the next few weeks.” She wants to show up for everyone in her orbit, even if that means potentially spreading herself thin.
The coffee shop is packed, so we end up down the street at Raku Fouet, a secluded Japanese-French restaurant. Tung asks if I want to share some veggie gyoza, and we both order the homemade ginger ale. She gushes over our dance class: “I’m so proud of us.”
From the outside it’s easy to assume Tung’s career has been smooth sailing — a series of lucky breaks caught at the right time. But much of her growth has happened in the quiet spaces between wins.
“I'm grateful for [my rejections] because it is the thing that pushed me to work harder and to keep studying,” she says. “I didn't get into the musical for the first few years of school, and that's okay. I took voice lessons and did the things I needed to do for myself.”
Even booking The Summer I Turned Pretty, one of her first professional auditions, didn’t mean instant momentum. “A year after that I didn't book anything. I was at home while my friends were at school, and they would see me and be like, ‘Wow, you're living the life,’ and I'd be like, ‘Well, I'm sitting at home and trying to figure out what the next steps are.’”
But figuring out your next steps isn’t so easy when everyone is watching. Our waitress pops by mid-conversation to say how much she loves Tung. On our way out Tung stops at the pastry counter, insisting she must buy me a “sweet treat” because it’s my birthday. (She refuses to take no for an answer.) The two chefs are young women who, at first, play it very cool as Tung looks over all the options, but eventually their chill dissipates.
“OMG, you’re Lola Tung! I’m so excited for July. You’re so pretty in person.” They both squeal and ask for an autograph, saying that they watch the show with their best friends and look forward to summer because of it. They can’t believe they now have her signature. They joke about framing it somewhere in the restaurant.
Even if Tung doesn’t know exactly where all this is going, or exactly what her future will hold, she does have people from all over the world in her corner.
Tung's first big project post-TSITP is Forbidden Fruits, a horror film directed by Meredith Alloway and starring Tung alongside an all-star female cast: Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, and Gabrielle Union. In the film, a retail employee secretly runs a witchy cult in the basement of a store at the mall. Filming took place in Toronto with seemingly countless night shoots.
For Tung it was also a chance to experience a different kind of set. “I'm just eternally grateful to be surrounded by so many women in positions of power that typically we don't see,” she says. “On Forbidden Fruits, the director was a woman and the camera operators and first ACs, which I had never seen. It was so cool.”
She continues, “I saw Lili Reinhart the other day. We went to see a movie, and we were just talking about [filming]. It was all night shoots, so we were nocturnal. But it was cool to be in a cast of, basically, entirely women. And there are a lot of looks in this movie. It was very heavy hair and makeup and costumes. I think it's the coolest thing ever to be able to do projects that are just so different. That's my goal with all of this.”
Reinhart, who was attached to the film for the last two years, remembers when the team first brought up Tung’s name as a potential cast member. After Tung was confirmed, Reinhart watched a few episodes of TSITP and followed her on Instagram. She was excited to work with someone who’d also been on one of those “large, young-adult shows.”
“She has the warmest energy and is so sweet,” Reinhart tells Teen Vogue. “This was her first indie film, and it can be a very different experience from shooting a large Amazon television production. She gracefully handled what I imagine is a bit of a whiplash. Lola locked into rehearsal and wanted to play the best version of this girl that she could. You could see her passion and determination and want to nail this role.”
As Reinhart mentioned, she and Tung have both starred in a big YA series with a notable fanbase — and a love triangle. Reinhart played Betty in the popular CW series Riverdale. The 29-year-old, who is now two years removed from that show’s end, is on the other side of what Tung is experiencing.
“We talked about that on set on our second-to-last day. We had this long talk where I was asking her about the show. I was like, ‘Which boy do you end up with?’ She didn't tell me. I was like, ‘I would've told you in a heartbeat, but okay,’” Reinhart says, laughing. “I was poking fun at her. She was like, ‘I can't tell anyone.’ But we were talking about how nobody prepares you for this.”
“This” being abrupt stardom filled with ’ships, teams, and parasocial connections. “We were talking about the mundane but important things like security, and how nobody tells you before you do this, ‘Hey, make sure you have secure accounts.’ There's just an element of… suddenly your life is not private anymore. There's no guidebook, and I feel like there's got to be a better way now for young actors coming into a successful show to handle things.”
Reinhart adds that “someone should write a book”; she says maybe she and Tung will do it. “No one knows when their show's going to be huge. Then by the time it happens, you're kind of caught up in it all,” she explains.
When thinking about her career, Tung is aware that there will always be a portion of people who forever know her as Belly Conklin, but she isn’t concerned. “I think it's a beautiful thing,” she says. “The fact that people watch and know the character makes me happy. Knock on wood, if I'm lucky enough to continue doing other projects like Lili, like a Kristen Stewart or Rob Pattinson, I don't mind that this was the first thing people saw me in. I'm grateful that it means that much to people.”
While the main focus of The Summer I Turned Pretty is its relationships, in many ways it’s also about Belly Conklin finding her beauty as she grows into a young woman. Hearing how “beautiful” she is isn’t something Tung digests well, but it’s something that's often thrown at her. In fact, recognizing her own beauty is one of the lessons from Belly that Tung plans to take forward as she moves on to new heights.
“I don't think being in a love triangle on screen has made me feel necessarily — I don't want to say ‘more beautiful’ — but I've learned about confidence and stepping into my power a bit from doing this job, and from Belly, even,” Tung says. “I think that's a really beautiful thing, that I've been able to learn so much [in my career], and that has made me feel beautiful. When I feel confident, I feel really beautiful. When I'm with my friends, who are so amazing, and I'm just talking with them and feeling like my true self, I feel really beautiful. This job can be hard because it can actually make you feel not beautiful.”
Tung is often on a red carpet. She attends fashion shows every season, and her life now is filled with photo shoots, random street selfies with fans, and auditions. Belly Conklin will soon be a loving memory she’ll revisit in flashes of nostalgia. She’s in the beginning motions for the rest of her career — on the threshold of everything, the world unfolding at her once sandy feet.
“I was a sweating mess in that class,” Tung says as we laugh about our morning. “But I think, again, that's beautiful. Being able to move your body in a fun dance class is beautiful. Whatever makes you feel most beautiful is the true thing that defines beauty. I don't know. It's kind of complex. Wait — I do know. I do know. I’ve got to recite that to myself.”
Production Credits
Photographer Elinor Kry
First Assistant Kendal Walker
Second Assistant Nadine Zhan
Stylist Sachiko Clyde
Stylist Assistant Christine Yoon
Tailor Lindsay Wright
Prop Stylist Maisie Sattler
Hair Stylist Dana Boyer at The Wall Group
Makeup Artist Misha Shahzada
Manicurist Jade Farrar
Retoucher Capas Retouch
Production Coordinator TJ O'Donnell
Production Assistant Elise Snider
Art and Design Director Emily Zirimis
Designer Liz Coulbourn
Associate Visuals Editor Bea Oyster
Senior Fashion Editor Tchesmeni Leonard
Associate Fashion Editor Samantha Gasmer
Editorial Credits
Editor-in-Chief Versha Sharma
Executive Editor Dani Kwateng
Features Director Brittney McNamara
Associate Entertainment Director Eugene Shevertalov
Associate Culture Director P. Claire Dodson
Culture Editor Kaitlyn McNab
Talent Manager Paige Garbarini
Associate Director of Audience Development and Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti
Sr. Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser
Social Media Manager Jillian Selzer
Copy Editor Dawn Rebecky
Video Ali Farooqui
