Warning: spoilers ahead for Every Year After season 1.
Persephone “Percy” Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett) were always going to find their way back to each other in Every Year After, the new Prime Video adaptation of Canadian author Carley Fortune’s debut 2022 novel Every Summer After.
In the show, the childhood best friends turned first loves reunite for the first time in a decade ahead of Sam’s mother Sue’s (Elisha Cuthbert) funeral in Barry’s Bay, the serene Canadian lake town where they spent every summer of their teens together; throughout the season, they are forced to confront the past mistakes that led to their painful estrangement. When Sam decides against proposing to his current girlfriend Taylor to give his whirlwind romance with Percy a second chance, a guilt-ridden Percy finally confesses why she fled years earlier: During her last summer in town, after Sam ended their long-distance relationship in an email, Percy impulsively hooked up with his older brother, Charlie (Michael Bradway).
Sam is understandably furious, unable to forgive Percy and Charlie—even after Sue’s funeral. But while he is no longer speaking to Charlie, Sam quietly follows Percy’s published work, watching her finally fulfill her potential as a writer. As an olive branch, Sam mails Percy the keys to Sue’s tavern in Barry’s Bay and shows up on the night of the reopening.
“I don’t feel like Sam and Percy have really resolved everything yet, so there’s a lot of things that need to be talked about and there’s a lot of resolution to come,” Cornett tells Teen Vogue, with Soverall nodding next to him in agreement. “Something that I would be hopeful for in a second season is trying to see them maybe trying to make it work and trying to at least become friends again before they can even attempt to become a couple again.”
For now, Percy and Sam will presumably have to rush to the hospital bedside of Charlie. The elder Florek brother is last seen suffering a heart attack—the same condition that claimed his and Sam’s father—in his hedge fund boss’s office after spotting an old photo of him, Percy, and Sam on the water. That photo—taken by Charlie’s eventual photographer love interest, Alice—is a clear nod to Fortune’s Charlie-centric sequel, One Golden Summer, which Harris confirms will be adapted if the show is renewed.
“I get very superstitious about getting too far ahead of myself before I have an order [for another season], so I haven’t yet pitched to Carley,” showrunner Amy B. Harris says, clarifying that, contrary to a recent report that she had a five-season plan for Every Year After, she “would be happy to go five seasons” in the first place. “I’ve had some conversations with Amazon about where I would be going. I think a lot about it, and I have a very strong feeling about where we’re going in Season 2.”
Following up on our exclusive, extended preview of Every Year After last month, Soverall, Cornett, Bradway and Harris all caught up with Teen Vogue during the show’s premiere week in New York City to discuss how that ending sets the stage for a potential season 2.
Matt Cornett: What I loved so much about the change—and I’m so happy that Carley was on board—was it gave Sam more of a reason to go off the deep end in our show and have that moment of really, really despising Charlie. There’s a couple of moments where Sam sees Charlie and Percy together again, and it’s a great way to help Sam spiral a little bit more in the present day. With him already knowing the secret [in the novel], he’s already had his time to grieve and to be upset at Charlie and Percy. I personally like the explosion that happens a little bit more in the show, and it gives us a little more reason to be able to explore that explosion.
Sadie Soverall: For Percy, it ups the stakes when she’s back. There’s this big secret that would end her world if Sam found out. Also, it feels like a parallel universe; we have one version of it in the book, and we have another version where she did tell him. Secrets are always really important to have in the playing of any character. But especially here, it makes the relationship between Percy and Charlie quite volatile, and you can’t quite believe that they would find any amity between them. So it’s an interesting thing to play with, and then where they get to—an understanding of each other and respect for each other—is really beautiful. It pays off in a really lovely way.
MC: Yeah, [the hook-up] adds to a little bit of Sam’s confusion with Percy, because it gives him a little bit more reason to not really understand the full story as to why she trailed off and completely stopped talking to him. He knows to a degree that [their estrangement] was his own doing, but it was to such a severe degree that he is a little confused and doesn’t really understand the level of this thing that happened between them.
SS: When I’m playing a character, I don’t think you have to always agree with what they do. I think you have to understand why they do something and fall in love with playing them, which I very much did. I understand where she came from—and, of course, it’s a really divisive decision. She makes a really big earth-shattering mistake that defines the rest of her life. I think it’s really exciting to get to play a character who’s made such a big mistake, who is not perfect, and who has a lot of things about herself that she needs to face. It was painful to shoot. It was also really beautiful and fun and complicated. It feels like real life, because real life is beautiful and fun and complicated and painful—and all these things can also be true at once. Sam can be the only person for her, but she can also be someone who has made mistakes.
Michael Bradway: I went into it not really looking at Charlie as this malicious person. The best way for me, as the actor, to justify it was that Charlie had to fall in love with Percy that summer. Obviously, Percy isn’t Charlie’s person, but in that summer, he fell in love with her, in whatever way that meant to him, or he wouldn’t have done it.
MC: I think it feels like more of a betrayal from Charlie than it does Percy. Even though Charlie is the guy that maybe Sam would expect it more from, Charlie knows better than anybody how Sam feels towards Percy—and Charlie knows the struggle that Sam went through in the 10 years that he didn’t talk to Percy. So the fact that Charlie had all that time that he could have gone to Sam and sat him down and been like, “Hey, this thing happened”... Something I think Sam would’ve expected of his brother is that honesty and that care towards Sam. So the fact that he didn’t have that from him and he had to find out via Percy, it feels like he’s been lied to for 10 years. Now it feels like a completely different human being.
MB: Obviously, Charlie is the one that made the mistake, so he’s the one asking for forgiveness. Sam is not ready to forgive him right now. Charlie understands why, and he’s not upset at Sam for giving him the cold shoulder a little bit. It’s completely understandable. Charlie just needs to wait and see when Sam is ready, and he’s going to be there for him when he is.
Amy B. Harris: I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to create ways to bounce characters off of each other in a way that is dramatic and also emotionally impactful. We know Sam and Percy are bouncing up against each other because their past love has meant a lot to them and there’s clearly emotions still there for them, but what else is there that could allow us to have them playing in a world that isn’t just about their romantic love? It’s about their relationship with Sue, for starters, because if Sue gave Percy the tavern, then that said something about how much she meant to Sue.
There’s a moment where Charlie says, “Why didn’t she want us to have it? I don’t understand.” For me, it connected a lot of things together that excited me—the drama of, “What the hell is happening?” and then the emotions that it brought up for Sam and Charlie of, “Why did our mom choose Percy?” She asked Charlie to bring her to Barry’s Bay for her memorial. She obviously had some plans in her mind. I don’t necessarily even know if Sue was thinking, “I want Sam and Percy together,” but she was thinking they needed closure if they’re not going to end up together. The scene in [the finale] where she’s talking about wearing the crown and the responsibility of that, and she’s like, “I don’t think my boys will want it”—to me, she’d already made the decision that the tavern was meant for Percy. So I loved that it was both dramatic for that trio, but then it also brought up the bubbling of emotions for them about their mom.
MB: In Episode 8, [there’s] the flashback between Percy and Sue when Percy basically tells Sue, “Hey, I’m going to leave early this summer.” And Sue was like, “What the heck is going on with you guys? Charlie just left without any notice. He said he had to go back to U of T.” So I don’t think Sue is an idiot. I think, yes, she had an inkling of something going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sue knew, but I don’t think anyone actually told her. She just made an astute observation, and she was following her gut. But if I had to give a yes or no answer, I’d say yes.
ABH: I think she understood. We talked a lot about whether or not we should learn that she knew, and we didn’t need to know for sure what she knew. I felt, at the end of the day, she understood that they were kids and that kids make mistakes. She wanted Percy to forgive herself and her kids to move on from their mistakes.
ABH: I knew I didn’t want full resolution for Percy and Sam. I intentionally left them 10 feet apart in that kitchen. There’s not a hug. Obviously, I wanted to mirror the last scene in the first episode with [the line] “You came home,” but I didn’t want to say that their story’s over. I think their story is just beginning, so I hope the fans feel that they got a happy ending in the sense that they’re coming back to each other. If we’re lucky enough to get a Season 2, I keep saying in the writers’ room, “I feel like this season is will-they-won’t-they, and Season 2 is how will they?”
I think the best way to get into a good relationship is to take care of yourself and figure out who you are. Percy’s starting to find her voice, and Sam is starting to realize what he wants from his life and walking back into Percy’s life. But I feel like there’s so much to say in Season 2. I personally thought being in a relationship would be very static, and what I found was it’s still deeply emotional. Love is like a body of water, and outside sources—like your own personal growth—change [that love]. The lake obviously is a body of water, so it’s very metaphorical for me.
SS: I think time is a really healing thing for both of them in this situation. The [present-day] events that happen in the show only happen over five or six days, so it’s a lot happening all at once. Having that time, Percy also has started writing and exploring that side of her life and that passion, and figuring out how to live and how to function as an adult. She grows a lot as a person that sets her up really well to have a much better relationship with Sam.
MC: Yeah, I agree. Given the fact that it is over five days, a lot of emotional, rash, impulse decisions are made. And whenever we have time to sit on our emotions, especially as much as Sam truly cares for and loves Percy, he sees her writing, and he’s so happy for her and so proud of her. He is able to step away from their relationship and see that she’s finally following through and getting to do this thing that she loves so much and something she’s so good at. So he is able to see that and pull himself out of it and then finally realize that maybe he’s not in the place to take care of the tavern. This is clearly something that his mom wanted, and he respects that. Maybe it is a way to keep Percy in his life a little bit longer.
ABH: Yes. If you’ve read One Golden Summer, Alice is the person who took that photograph. What I loved about where we landed on that scene with him seeing that photograph and then obviously having some sort of heart issue is Charlie’s heart is broken, and now it’s physically showing signs of it. But that photo is representative of a really happy time in his life before things fell apart. Sam is the most important person in his life now, and he isn’t speaking to him.
MB: I think Charlie’s life is flashing before his eyes, and that moment obviously triggers something in Charlie—a better time; a time where I feel like, as kids too, it’s so easy to look back and be like, “My problems were so different back then than they are now.” Percy and Sam are the two closest people to Charlie. So seeing that and him thinking about how he messed up really bad, he’s just really scared, if anything, in that moment.
ABH: We knew we wanted to introduce Alice in some clever but small way. We didn’t want them to have a meeting. I like biorhythms. I knew if we were leaving Sam and Percy in a potentially happier, more resolved place that we would launch Charlie into a much less resolved and difficult place. Similarly, I think the love triangle—which I really want to explore in Season 2—is Delilah suddenly realizing that the person maybe she should have been looking at all along is falling for someone else.
ABH: That very early on became the plan for me. I really wanted it to be clear that Jordie and Delilah had always had a friendship that was important to them. In the New Year’s Eve scene where they kiss—and it’s a great kiss in the past—we started to figure out that we wanted to see them in the past and what that looked like. But in the present, we sense that Jordie was always in love with her. I didn’t know exactly how we would see that in the past—if they had ever kissed, if anything had ever happened between them, or if they were always ships passing in the night. But I knew in the present that we wanted to feel that Jordie had unrequited love for her.
I felt like Chantal had to let go of some of her tightness. Jordie [lives] the ultimate lake life. Even though there’s some disappointment for him being back in Barry’s Bay, he’s also embraced his life and has a sense of calm about him that would be interesting with Chantal’s high-strung energy. So, very early on, I knew that that would be a fantastic love triangle. And once we’d cast those actors, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be good.”
ABH: I love that he described it that way, because, for Charlie, having feelings for somebody is dangerous. He chose her because she was married, so it felt like he didn’t have to get intimate and hurt anybody’s feelings, but they care deeply for each other and are also friends. For Percy and Sam, love is the ultimate, but Charlie’s issues are very much not just around what happened between him and Percy and what it did to Sam, but also how he was forced to grow up as a kid [after his dad died] and take care of Sam because his mom was grief-stricken. I love [the idea of] seeing what that looked like for Charlie in flashbacks [in future seasons]—what that childhood looked like and how hard it was, and the things he was hiding.
Delilah had such a sense of wild abandonment in her teenage years, like, “Who gives a sh*t what people think of you? Let’s have fun! I could hook up with that guy!” There was something that got a little tight about her when she ended up married. She started caring about being—and being seen as—perfect, and what will people think of her if she gets a divorce. What Charlie gave her was a little bit of a sense of, “I remember the girl who was confident and knew what she wanted.” At the end of our first season, before we even get to the montage of her life experiences she’s having once she leaves Barry’s Bay, she realizes she has a lot of work to do on herself. She goes off and has her “hot girl year,” right? She’s ready to party. She’s hooking up with a lot of different types of people. It’s something she really didn’t do, because she got serious with a boyfriend in college.
It was fun for me to have [Charlie and Delilah] cross—he’s starting to think, “Maybe I could do this commitment thing”; she’s starting to feel like, “I need some freedom to figure it out.”
MB: Charlie was heartbroken by the loss of his father, so because of that, he never really trusted anybody fully. He saw his mom and dad that were really in love, and he saw that ripped out from under his mom, so that makes him very cautious to be in a serious relationship. Charlie is looked at as this jokester, sarcastic playboy. Of course, Charlie does get around, but he says something to Chantal in the third episode: “I tell [my partners] what I’m expecting from this relationship from the beginning, and if I hurt them, then I’ll try to make it right, but I never lead anybody on.” Charlie’s not doing this to be a f*ck-boy in a way, but he’s doing this because he can’t be vulnerable with anybody because he’s afraid that he’s going to get hurt.
So as the season goes on, he starts to shed that hard exterior and to become more vulnerable, especially with Percy when they’re locked in that closet [in Episode 7]. So what I’m really excited to explore is that next phase of Charlie, [where] we’re going to see a lot more of his vulnerability.
