Is Cousins Beach from 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' a Real Place?

Elle

6 days ago

The third and final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty officially began streaming on July 16. The Prime Video series, based on the books by Jenny Han (To All the Boys I've Loved Before), has quickly become a fan favorite. The series follows Isabel 'Belly' Conklin (Lola Tung) as she's caught between two crushes: her childhood friend Conrad (Christopher Briney) and his younger brother Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno).
There's also growth and drama in their family dynamics, but the heart of the series is the love story that takes place on Cousins Beach, where Belly's family visits every year. Here's where they made that atmosphere come to life.
The two families vacation every year at Cousins Beach, but sadly, it turns out that the beach does not actually exist. Han told Prime Video that she 'had a lot of beaches in [her] head' as she was forming Belly's story. 'I think that's part of the reason why people can read the book and feel like [Cousins Beach] is their beach,' she said. In another interview with Today, she said that Cousins Beach was inspired by Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons, and Nags Head.
Nags Head is in North Carolina, and that's where the show was eventually filmed—more specifically, the town of Wilmington. Other shows filmed in Wilmington, NC include Netflix's The Waterfront and the classic dramas One Tree Hill and Dawson's Creek.
The Fisher family's house is located in a Wilmington gated community called Porters Neck Plantation. That's where many of the house's exterior shots were filmed. '[The house] had to have that cedar shake on it because [Han] wanted that Cape Cod Northeast look,' the location manager, Lindsay Fort, told People.
As for the interior of the house, those scenes took place on sound stages in Wilmington, but the attention to detail is all the same.
'Our character Susannah [Conrad and Jeremiah's mom] loves to garden, and there are always fresh flowers throughout the house,' the production designer for season 1, Teresa Mastropierro, told House Beautiful. 'Our greens department literally transformed the landscape around the house. I think we bought every last hydrangea plant in the state.'
In addition to Wilmington, scenes were filmed in other North Carolina locations like Southport, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, Old River Farms, Porters Neck Country Club, Fort Fisher, and Wrightsville Beach, per People. The latter is where Belly and Jeremiah took the path from the house to the beach in season 1.
'That's the one with the seashells hanging in it,' Fort, told People about Wrightsville Beach. 'It has that really pretty romantic vibe that they run down that path.'
College scenes were filmed at Han's alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
'Filming at my old dorm, Old East, was definitely emotional,' Han told UNC. 'I was in the first class of women who were allowed to live there. I would lay out in the grass and listen to music and look up at the stars. It felt very romantic and nostalgic to come back and be able to shoot my show here.'