Why you should keep an eye on The Summer I Turned Pretty star Lola Tung and her Broadway debut

By Abby Amoakuh

Updated Mar 5, 2024 at 01:48 PM

Reading time: 3 minutes

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Image courtesy of Numéro Netherlands

This is Lola Tung’s world and we’re all just living in it, in case you haven’t heard. According to her many fans on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), the young actress is only a few steps away from world domination now that she took Broadway by storm as Eurydice in the Tony-winning musical Hadestown in February 2024. On top of a successful career on screen, her Broadway performance makes it undeniable that The Summer I Turned Pretty actress is having a major moment right now. So let’s turn the spotlight on Lola Tung, shall we?

Lola Tung is an American actress, born and raised in New York City by a mother of Swedish and Chinese heritage and a father of Eastern European ancestry. She is best known for her role as Isabel or Belly Conklin in the Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Tung landed the coveted role during her first year at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, one of the best acting schools in the US. She auditioned over Zoom while taking remote university classes (way back in the dark ages of COVID-19) and managed to score her first credited acting job. Not bad for a fresher, right?

The Summer I Turned Pretty is a show from the same mind that brought you To All The Boys I Loved Before, American author and screenwriter Jenny Han. Han is also responsible for turning the book trilogy into a series for Amazon Prime. She must have done a fantastic job because it’s one of Prime’s most successful shows to date that ranks among its top 3 for global acquisitions due to the fact that it drove significant subscription growth.

Both the books and the series focus on Belly, who spends every summer at her mother’s best friend’s home in Cousins Beach, Massachusetts. Her mom’s friend, Susannah Fisher, has two sons named Jeremiah and Conrad. Throughout the story, Belly is caught up in a back-and-forth love triangle with the two of them, so if messy drama is what you like, this show is worth a watch.

As of writing this, Lola Tung is 21 years old and will turn 22 on 28 October 2024. Since Belly is aged 17 in season two of the series, Tung is only three to four years older than her character. That’s not too bad!

 

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Her late October birthday makes her a Scorpio, the most brooding, dark and mysterious of the signs. However, by the time this article is finished, we’ll hopefully have lifted some of the mystery surrounding The Summer I Turned Pretty star.

Oh you know, just setting the world on fire with her incredible acting, grade-A singing, and excellent dance moves. Tung is currently portraying Eurydice in the Broadway musical Hadestown. She replaced Solea Pfeiffer for a limited run from 9 February to 17 and is starring opposite To All The Boys I Loved Before star Jordan Fisher (aka John Ambrose McClaren).

I didn’t have a The Summer I Turned Pretty/All The Boys I Loved Before crossover on my 2024 bingo card but here we go.

While this story was not conceived in the beautiful mind of Jenny Han, it is still a juicy tale you don’t want to miss out on. Hadestown is a modern retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, the infamous Greek tale about a musician, Orpheus, who tries to rescue his love, Eurydice, from the underworld but ultimately fails because he turns around to glance at her despite being told not to.

In the musical, Eurydice escapes to Hadestown because she is looking for something to eat, as a famine and harsh weather ravage her hometown. Together with other refugees, Eurydice becomes a worker in Hadestown’s post-apocalyptic, industrial hellscape. However, Orpheus quickly discovers Eurydice’s disappearance and decides to rescue her from there.

Despite her short stay on stage, social media is flooded with positive reviews for Tung. In fact, her show did not only begin but start with a standing ovation when she took to the stage. It was a moment that spoke to her broad appeal and charisma. The young actress embodies childish glee, playful innocence, and a certain lightness that makes her perfect for the role of Eurydice, a lost and naive lover trying to find her path. These elements also bear some similarities to her role as Belly in The Summer I Turned Pretty.

So it would be an understatement to say that Tung has the world at her feet right now. After two mesmerising performances, she has cemented her status as one of the brightest rising stars that has netizens in a chokehold. Here’s to that and whatever comes next for our girl!