Laurel Park (Jackie Chung) doesn’t fully break down over Susannah’s death until Episode 7 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
While Belly (Lola Tung), Steven (Sean Kaufman), Taylor (Rain Spencer), Conrad Fisher (Chris Briney), Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno), Skye (Elsie Fisher) and Cam Cameron (David Iacono) threw a party to rebel against the sale of the Cousins Beach house by Aunt Julia (Kyra Sedgwick), Laurel remained unaware of Julia’s plans and the kids’ efforts to thwart them. It was a drunken call from Belly that tipped Laurel off as to what her children were really up to while she was away promoting her new memoir, “It’s Not Summer Without You.” The book was about meeting Susannah and living life as best friends from college.
“Laurel just thinks that if she deals with her grief, she will crumble and she won’t be able to be a pillar for her family or her friend,” Chung told TheWrap in an interview that took place before the beginning of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “So her way of processing is not processing.”
The penultimate episode of the Prime Video series breaks several tensions — including the mother-daughter tension between Laurel and Belly. Park attributes Laurel losing control and hitting her daughter to bottled-up feelings ever since Susannah’s funeral, at which Belly made a pretty big scene when she told Conrad she hated him.
“Laurel is always trying to keep a good face. Obviously, at her friend’s funeral, she doesn’t want her daughter making a scene. And throughout the season, Laurel is just dealing with her grief [by] bottling it up and bottling it up. And then, when she comes to the house and sees that it’s a mess and sees her daughter after her drunk dialing her out of seemingly just partying. I think it all just comes to a head and that’s where it came out of.”
One of Laurel’s flashbacks — the most emotional moment for Chung and Blanchard to film together — shows a rare breakdown for Laurel, who procrastinates writing her book while Blanchard’s Susannah watches over her shoulder. The shared moment on the doc shows how both actresses avoided grief. Susannah bottled up her feelings in a different way.
“I don’t know if we really see her experience grief,” Blanchard told TheWrap in the same interview. “She’s more just making sure everyone that she’s leaving is okay. Except for [Laurel]. I sort of just rely on [Laurel] to take care of me. Especially with the kids, you just see her wanting to leave them knowing how much she loves them and that everything will be okay.”
Season 2 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is available to stream on Prime Video.