'Summer I Turned Pretty' launched its cast to stardom. Like their characters, they've evolved

The first time Lola Tung realized anyone was watching "The Summer I Turned Pretty," really watching it, was last year at a Yankees game with her cast mates. The stars of Jenny Han's coming-of-age YA romance adaptation were recognized by strangers who professed their love for the show, which had barely been out a week. The series was soon to be a hit, heading toward a No. 1 debut on Prime Video.

"It's been a wild ride, in the best way," Tung told the Times. (For the record, added the native New Yorker, she's a Mets fan.) She was 19 when she landed the breakout role — her first professional acting gig — of Isabel "Belly" Conklin, a teenage girl coming into her own one fateful summer, and she reprises it for Season 2, which was adapted from Han's sequel novel "It's Not Summer Without You."

Fueled by viral online reactions and the popularity of Han's bestselling novels, "Summer" was renewed even before the series premiered last June, skyrocketing Tung and her co-stars, and Gavin Casalegno, who play brothers and romantic rivals Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, to social media fame virtually overnight. "Summer" fever has only grown since; following the release of the first three episodes of Season 2 last week, Amazon announced that the series had more than doubled its worldwide audience since the first season, and the hashtag #thesummeriturnedpretty has reached more than 8 billion views on TikTok. New episodes