Jenny Han is giving The Summer I Turned Pretty fans more to unpack in the wake of Season 3’s latest episodes.
Season 3, Episode 4, which was released last Wednesday (July 30), introduced viewers to Adam Fisher’s (Tom Everett Scott) secretary, Kayleigh, played by Emma Ishta. What may have initially seemed like an insignificant cameo proved to be crucial.
Conrad (Christopher Briney) revealed to Belly (Lola Tung) in Season 2 that his father had cheated on his mother Susannah (Rachel Blanchard) with Kayleigh “the first time” that she was sick.
This storyline is also touched on even earlier in the series, when Susannah tells Laurel (Jackie Chung) in Season 1, Episode 4, “Summer Heat,” about Adam’s affair.
“He cheated on me three years ago with his secretary,” she says. “While I was going through chemo. So ’80s, right?”
In the series’ latest episode, which began streaming on Wednesday (Aug. 6), Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) gets on his father’s good side, and Adam offers to pay for Jeremiah and Belly’s wedding. While telling Belly the news, Jeremiah name-drops his father’s secretary.
“And my dad said that his secretary Kayleigh will help with the planning,” he notes. “She lives for that kind of stuff.”
Belly keeps mum on her knowledge of Kayleigh, and Han — the author of The Summer I Turned Pretty book series, the creator and showrunner of the Prime Video series, and the director of Season 3, Episode 5 — explained to Entertainment Weekly that “from Belly’s point of view, Conrad told that to her in confidence, and it was something that she knew that nobody else knew.”
“That’s why she’s not saying it in that moment, because it was something private that she told him that she will honor,” she added.
Han highlighted that for Belly, “even though Jeremiah’s her fiancé and they don’t really keep secrets between them, this is not her secret.” In addition to “want[ing] to be respectful of that confidence that she had with Conrad,” Han said “as far as [Belly] knows, Jeremiah doesn’t know about it because Conrad told her he was the only one that knew.”
Not only that, but according to Han, Conrad “wouldn’t want Jere to know that because the whole point was him protecting Jere from information that would hurt him.” Han also cited a “pattern” with Conrad, in which he does “what he thinks is best for other people, and trying to protect Belly from information that he thinks is going to not just make her unhappy, but change the essence of who she is and dim her light and her joy.” This is on full display in Season 3, Episode 5, which is narrated from Conrad’s POV.
“And I don’t think he wants that for his brother either, who he knows wants to be good with his dad,” Han told EW. “I’ve loved getting to dig deeper into that and having Adam be a bigger part of the season.”
Those who have read Han’s novels know who Jeremiah ends up with on the page, but will the series end in the same way?
New episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty are released Wednesdays on Prime Video.