Chapel Hill seeing stars as TV hit ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ films in college town
Chapel Hill is buzzing with excitement this week as filming for the Amazon series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” takes over UNC’s campus and parts of downtown Chapel Hill.
People flocked to East Franklin Street to glimpse the coming-of-age series’ cast on Monday. College students peered out the windows of coffee shop 1922 and snagged all the outdoor tables at Carolina Coffee Shop for the chance to see actors Christopher Briney and Lola Tung, who play Conrad Fisher and Isabel “Belly” Conklin. In the series, UNC will become Finch College.
UNC senior Linnea Conway and two friends ran to Franklin Street between summer classes to watch the production film Monday. She watched the first two seasons of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and was excited when she heard the show was filming in Chapel Hill.
“We had a 30-minute break from class, and we are about to run back,” Conway, a nursing major, said.
The film crew spent Monday morning filming on East Franklin Street. Yellow yard signs dotted the campus, directing the crew and extras to buildings being used by the production.
Filming continues through Wednesday when Cameron Avenue, the main road through campus, will be closed between Columbia and Raleigh streets from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.
More than two dozen people gathered to watch Tung and Briney film a scene outside the downtown post office and in a gray Range Rover on Franklin Street in the late morning. Dozens of background extras milled along the street for the scene.
Holly Clifford, a Durham resident, sat at a table outside 1922 on Franklin Street on Monday morning.
She and her mother had seen the series’ call for extras on Facebook a month ago and applied immediately, even though the true name of the production had not been released.
Clifford didn’t hear back from Cherrix Casting Wilmington about being an extra, so she showed up in person just in case. She said she was hoping for a call back for Wednesday.
“We thought this would be a cool opportunity, and we are still manifesting it,” she said.
On Monday security guards turned people walking down the street away from the set and carefully watched the crowd that had gathered to watch, asking people not to take photos. Crew members shielded the actors from photography with umbrellas.
That didn’t stop fans from grabbing photos and videos that soon circulated on social media.
Instagram account @uncchicks posted several memes about sneaking onto the set of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” which garnered more than 4,000 likes.
“Chapel Hill is definitely your look Connie baby,” UNC senior Chiara Sabato wrote about a photo of Briney on X.
This story was originally published July 9, 2024 at 12:17 PM.
