Sean Kaufman Was Worried About Steven’s Summer I Turned Pretty Ending

The internet seemingly cannot get enough of the Cousins’ crew from The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Sean Kaufman, who plays main character Belly’s older brother in the series, is one of several younger actors to call the show their breakout role. While Belly (Lola Tung) has been dealing with her seasons-long love triangle with Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney), Kaufman’s character Steven has dealt with plenty of his own romantic and career drama.

Steven’s the main character in his own story, as Kaufman puts it. The 25-year-old actor is outwardly grateful for the gift that this show has been to him, sharing that he hopes to be a figure for other actors coming up in the industry. “I do want to be a figure for Asian actors, and young Asian actors, especially,” Kaufman tells The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom last week, just a day after The Summer I Turned Pretty’s penultimate episode.

“One of the most beautiful things ever was being able to see Steven Yeun do The Walking Dead. I think he was the first ever guy who I saw up there [that] kind of had the same face as me,” he continues. “It wasn’t a stereotype, he didn’t have an accent and it wasn’t racist. He was just a dude who happened to be Asian in the apocalypse. And I was like, ‘That’s fucking awesome.’”

As the Prime Video series prepares to conclude after three seasons, Kaufman speaks with THR about the bond he shares with his cast, why logging off of social media was needed and why he was a bit nervous about where Steven might end the series.

This season of The Summer I Turned Pretty has essentially taken over the Internet. What has the experience been like with this last season on such a magnified scale?

It’s been surreal. I think I’m beyond grateful for it. It’s anything I think any of us could have asked for. It’s amazing that people are so invested in it and care about it just as much as I think we cared about it when making it. I think that is a really satisfying feeling. I know this season we put a lot of work in, all of us, and to see people, whether they’re enjoying it or not enjoying it or however they feel about it, they’re investing so much of themselves into the show. I think that that’s really, really cool. That’s better than just blindly liking it. I don’t know, but it’s amazing. And now a lot of people stop me on the street and that’s pretty dope too.

Looking back at the beginning of the series, has everything exceeded your expectations? Were you able to do the things you had hoped going in?

I tried to always hold myself to no expectations and just let things come and go as they do. I think it’s kind of just good for me mentally, but I do remember, in the very beginning of the first season, we all got along extremely well. So well. They’re my best friends, the people in this show. I remember hearing from the crew, people who’d been doing this for 20, 30, 40 years, and they were like, you guys got something special. The show’s special, but the bond you guys have, this does not happen every show [or] every movie. Hearing that, this being my first real big thing, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t understand what that meant. I was like, what do you mean? It’s not always like this? That I don’t always find the best people in my life and people I’m going to talk to forever. [I was] not really listening to people who have been in the industry for 30, 40 years.

Slowly throughout this process, I’ve figured out that it is special. My bond with these people will long outlive this show, and that is something that is beyond essential to me. [It’s] something I’m so happy to have figured out. Going back to the books, I think one thing that I love about my character specifically is that he’s not in the books too much. There was a lot of freedom with Jenny [Han, creator] and I when it came to what happens with his story and where does it go and the arc it takes throughout the full three seasons.

Hearing you say that you’ve all become so close is sweet. For a lot of you in the series, it was your big break. What was it like to have them as your support system as you all took this new path in your careers?

It was really lovely to have this experience with them. I talk to my friends about this a lot where it’s like, from now on, I will always be known as Sean Kaufman from The Summer I Turned Pretty, whether I do projects that eclipse it, it doesn’t matter. This is what I’ll be known for, and there are only a handful of my true friends who knew me before this. And they [his fellow cast members] are those people that knew me before this. Just as I knew Lola before she was Belly, and I knew Chris before he was Conrad. That opportunity is past itself now, and that is no longer a thing for me to meet people and not know that.

It’s awesome to have that together because it’s truly the last set of friends in my life where I’m like, we knew each other way before anything, way before it all went down. That is something that I think I can truly learn to appreciate because at the end of the day when I know I have a real problem and really something that I need to talk to somebody about, I can go to them and be like, you know me and who I really am, and that’s irreplaceable.

Do you find that to be a good thing for you? That you’ll be someone known for being in this show, or do you find that it’s a bit of a challenge for you to work past?

I think it’s a blessing to me. The fact that anybody would ever recognize me from something and stick that to me is amazing. As an actor, I only ever want to do projects that I care about, and because of that, if somebody recognizes me from a project, I care about it. I love it. It’s so amazing to me. I know there was a time where nobody gave… people still don’t give a fuck who I am. But there was a time where a lot of, there’s a time where a lot of less people gave a fuck about me, and I am grateful that people know me for Steven and for The Summer I Turned Pretty. I think I’ll always carry that with a badge of honor on my chest. The only thing is that I hope I can carry a lot more badges on my chest, but I’m very proud to carry that one.

How do you feel about where Steven is going into the finale?

I think he’s in a good place finally. I think it took a very long while to get there — near death — but I think he’s finally in a place that he could feel comfortable with. The arc for this season for me, and I think I’ve said this before, but it’s really been him figuring out that life can end tomorrow. It can be gone in the blink of an eye, so to spend it on people that aren’t fulfilling me and to spend it on work that isn’t fulfilling me, to spend it on anything that isn’t fulfilling, is detrimental to him. For him to go through that, to figure it out with Taylor (Rain Spencer) and his job at Breaker [Capital] to now where he just finally quit his job. Him finally being able to pursue what he wants and be with the person who wants him and he wants them, you know what I mean. There’s obviously a giant other mess that affects his life. But for the most part, he’s his own main character. He’s in a great place, and I’m really happy to to see that after a long tumultuous season.

Were you nervous about that outcome ever? Were you ever worried it was going to be a tough time until the end, or were you always hopeful that he would land on his feet?

I was always a little worried. Jenny’s a trickster, and she loves making surprises and writing stuff in that nobody expects. I know I was on my tiptoes, and I think she told me literally, I don’t even know if I can say this, I don’t really care, but she was like, I think she said she changed this Steven and Taylor ending, which I don’t even think you guys have seen yet, but she changed it a million times before she finally picked the one we’ll see [this week]. She told me [that] there’s so many ways it could go around that it kept [her] on my toes. I was like, well, which one are you choosing though? She surprised me enough as it is. I thought I was dying in the crash. She came up to me when I read it, I was like, “Oh man, guys, it’s been a good run. I’ll see you guys at the press tour.”

Considering this season’s been under such a microscope on the internet, did you feel more pressure or was that not really something you guys thought of when you were making this?

No, I definitely don’t think it’s something to think about at all. I try to block everything out otherworldly when I’m acting and just focus on obviously what’s in the moment. The only time that it was prevalent was when we went to shoot in Chapel Hill on UNC’s campus. Again, for the most part, shooting the first two seasons… We have such great fans, but for the most part, nobody gives a fuck about us. Nobody cares. We can go to all these places. Then during the third season when we were shooting that, I remember we went to Chapel Hill and there were crowds of people waiting while we were shooting. They’d see Gavin [Casalegno] and Chris [Briney] and you’d just hear the screams of people. It’s one of those things where you actually have take a breath and focus. There is something else going on. That part of me was just like, well, that’s Gavin and Chris. Look at ’em. I would scream too. I do scream, but it was definitely an unexpected boom in popularity that we weren’t really thinking about.

Are you someone who disconnects from work? Are you someone who can stop thinking about it for a bit? Or are you always thinking about what that next step is?

I’m always thinking about the next step. I always question where that’s from though. I think a lot of it is from insecurity, to be quite honest. I’m obsessed with acting and my career, and I love what I do so much. If I could do it 12 months out of the year, I would, that’d be a dream. I am not going to sit here and lie and pretend like I can let it go or that I don’t care about it enough. I really do. I think about it every day, and there’s nothing that’ll stop me from that. The only thing time I can ever let go… I understand probably the answer is therapy, but the only time that I’m ever really able to let go of my insecurity or my thoughts is when I’m acting. I’m strictly in the moment of that character in that scene, everything else literally goes by the wayside.

Do you feel that that’s gotten more difficult for you as the show has grown in popularity, or is it something that is maybe kind of dwindling as the years go by? Or do you find it kind of fluctuates?

I think it fluctuates. I don’t know if it ever truly dwindles. I also know that there are steps that I can take to keep it under wraps to a certain extent. I try to stay offline a lot. I think once the show is out, I love that people can see it, but the only voice that I need for myself is my own. I know how I shot it, but it never goes away.

Social media can have such a positive effect, but I have to assume it’s tough to focus on the job you’re doing with voices commenting on every part of your job. Was that a choice to say offline conscious?

It was a conscious choice. After the second season came out, I think I was on TikTok still. I was on Instagram a lot. I’m on Instagram still, but I was on a lot and there was a lot of really positive stuff. I don’t think I saw a single negative thing about me and my character after season two. It was, honestly, that that started to mess with me. Why is my ego huge? I got to keep myself in check. It was just nothing but positive things, and I was like, I have to do something to get offline because this is just getting to my head. It was kind of that moment where I [deleted] TikTok. [I] set a timer on Instagram. That’s one thing that I always love about my friends is that no matter all the love that I’ll get online, I can go to my friends and they’re like, “You idiot, you stupid idiot.”

The Summer I Turned Pretty season three finale premieres Wednesday on Prime Video.