As “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 shifts Belly’s journey from Cousins to Paris, Episode 9 introduces Benito, a character that fans who have read creator Jenny Han’s books might recognize.
Belly (Lola Tung) comes face-to-face with Benito (Fernando Cattori) once she arrives in Paris after calling off her wedding to Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). More specifically, while on her quest to locate her stolen bag, Belly provides a girl code service to a young woman named Gemma (Corinna Brown), who then introduces Belly to her friends, including Benito, who seems immediately taken with Belly after watching her reclaim her backpack from the thief.
Fans were eagerly awaiting Benito’s introduction during Belly’s Paris romp after first hearing of the character in Conrad’s letters to Belly at the end of the third book in Han’s trilogy, “We’ll Always Have Summer.” And fans even got a look at who they correctly assumed was Benito in the final trailer of the season.
In the book, Conrad mentions Benito by name in his third letter to Belly as she is studying abroad in Spain (which is swapped for Paris in the Prime Video series), and Conrad mentions he heard about Benito from Laurel.
“She told me you met some Spanish guy named Benito, and he rides around on a scooter. Really Belly? A guy named Benito with a scooter?” Conrad writes, scoffing “he probably wears leather pants and has a long stringy ponytail” and “probably looks like a model and weighs 100 pounds and writes you poetry in Spanish.”
“I don’t know what you see in a guy like that, but I don’t know what you ever saw in me either, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste, right?” Conrad’s letter continued.
By his fourth letter, however — which Conrad notably sends without hearing back from Belly — Conrad mentions he heard she isn’t “hanging out with that guy Benito anymore,” saying “don’t say I didn’t warn you…”
Despite subbing out Spain for Paris, Han didn’t change the character of Benito, and found her Benito in Cattori, who has also been featured in “Untamed Royals” and “With You in the Future” and can soon be seen in “Padre Tierra” and “The Follies.” It seems like we’re in for a tad of romance between Belly and Benito, but likely not anything that would distract her enough from Conrad (Christopher Briney).
Cattori joins the cast for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 as a recurring character alongside Brown, who is best known for starring in “Heartstopper,” as well as Isaline Prevost Radeff (“Ceux Qui Travaillent,” “Haute Mer”) and Jahz Armando (“Gangs of London”).
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.
