Originally, the poster for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 on Prime Video showed Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) kissing Belly (Lola Tung) on the cheek while Conrad (Christopher Briney) looks on. After the finale aired, some fans noticed the image had been reversed, with Conrad kissing Belly while Jeremiah is left on the outside. According to showrunner Jenny Han, the poster swap is a nod to “Sabrina,” the 1954 romantic comedy film starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden, directed by Billy Wilder.
“That was always my idea to do the switch,” Han revealed to the Hollywood Reporter. “Fans know that in the classic movie ‘Sabrina,’ David [Holden] is the one kissing Sabrina [Hepburn] but he’s not the person that she ends up with. So, I thought it just added a little bit of intrigue and fun to see the switch.”
The Summer I Turned Pretty poster is an homage to Sabrina
A small idea from the showrunner ended up shaping some of the online fan discourse ahead of the final season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” One thing the team behind the Prime Video adaptation had in their back pocket was the fact that the show doesn’t exactly follow the book at every single turn — so even fans who knew the source material front-to-back couldn’t predict for sure who Belly would ultimately end up with. That wiggle room would play to the show’s advantage — in the case of the poster, it allowed Han to mess with fan expectations a bit.
“One of the big things was trying to figure out where [and] when to do that moment [to release the second version of the poster],” said Jenny Han. We ended up doing it much later, but I had toyed with the idea of doing it sooner than that. You got to have fun. It was just a beautiful photograph, and we had shot it both ways.”