YA rock star Han takes charge of media empire
Novelist producing, showrunning own TV, film adaptations
It was a hot summer day in Cousins. Jenny Han sat inside a beach house, phone in hand, splitting her attention between emails and texts, and the torrents of teenage life and love playing out in front of her eyes. She watched intently, searching for nuance in the scene before her.
“So much of romantic stories is about the looks people give — sneaking looks at each other, being aware of them,” she said as characters she dreamed up sprang to life on playback monitors.
Han wasn’t in the fictional Cousins Beach. It wasn’t summer. On this October day, the author-turned-showrunner was on set in Wilmington, North Carolina, bringing the second season of her Amazon Prime Video series adaptation “The Summer I Turned Pretty” down the home stretch.
In June 2022, the show’s first season debuted at No. 1 on the streaming service; to date the hashtag #thesummeriturned pretty has drawn 6.8 billion views on TikTok, according to Amazon Prime Video. Overnight, the cast became stars on social media and the success of the series sent Han’s novels back to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. “Summer” also marked a milestone for Han, who was already considered a rock star in the world of young adult literature — she made the transition from bestselling novelist to successful series creator.
Han, 42, has been in building mode, starting her own production company, Jenny Kissed Me, and launching multiple streaming franchises from her novels in the last five years: Netflix’s
“To All the Boys” films, which she executive produced; “XO, Kitty,” a spinoff series also on Netflix that she created and served as co-showrunner alongside Sascha Rothchild; and “Summer,” which she created and serves as co-showrunner in its second season, now streaming, with Sarah Kucserka.
Han reflected on the end of the shoot that was on the horizon. “It’s been very fertile,” said Han, who signed an overall television and film deal with Amazon Studios last year. “I’m having a lot of ideas, and I’m thinking about the future. But right now, I’m very focused on landing this plane.”
Han always knew that she wanted to tell stories. She’d fill notebooks with them growing up in suburban Richmond, Virginia, the eldest daughter of Korean immigrant parents. Like Lara Jean Song Covey, the teen heroine of her 2014 novel “To
All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” she liked baking and books and penning fanfic of herself and her friends. She considered being a librarian or a teacher before pursuing an MFA in creative writing with her parents’ blessing. “I’ve always felt confident about being a writer, and the adults in my life have always really instilled that,” she said.
Han was still in grad school when she got the call that her first novel was going to
It was no longer about me at that point, it was for all the people who put their money where their mouths were and said, ‘We believe in you and we want this record.’ I had to make it happen at that point.”
Strauss said that knowing that supportive audience was there was also the confidence boost she needed heading into “The Call of the Void.”
“This record was an amazing experience,” she said. “With the first record, I didn’t really collaborate with anyone. It was my boyfriend and my best friend playing with me … On this route, there was a lot more to learn in working with these incredible artists who have their own careers and labels and management, which made things a lot more complicated, but in terms of the artistic part of it, that was such a great experience for me.”
On the album, Strauss said she’s perfectly fine just shredding on guitar and letting the pro vocalists do their thing. “The more amazing singers I work with, the less I want to get on the microphone,” she said with a laugh. “I’m working with these absolutely phenomenal vocalists, and I can sing a little and anyone that comes and sees me will see me do some backups here and there. I’ll do what I love, which is to play guitar and let these wonderful vocalists do what they love, and I think it’s better that way.”
“Dead Inside,” off the new record, topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart earlier this year, making her the first female solo artist in more than three decades to top that chart. The last time was Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet,” according to Billboard. There have been other female-fronted bands that have topped that chart including the Pretty Reckless and Halestorm.
“I definitely think it’s long overdue,” Strauss said of being the first solo artist to achieve that honor in so long. “That’s not to say that women aren’t out there doing it. There are a lot of female-fronted bands that have done it, so it’s not as dire as it may sound at first. That being said, there were a lot of women who blazed the trail for me to get to this point today, and I hope what I’m doing is continuing to move the needle in the right direction.”
She has no idea how many days she’ll end up being able to spend at home in 2023.
She hasn’t had many days off work so far and was set to be out in July for a few more solo dates, and now the Rams are returning to SoFi for preseason games in August. She’ll be back on the road in the late summer and early fall with Alice Cooper as that band teams up with Rob Zombie to launch the Freaks on Parade Tour.
“Last year was a lot; it was crazy,” she said. “But honestly, it’s a year every guitar player dreams of. Getting to play some of the biggest stadiums and festivals all over the world, working with a NFL team, working with a rock legend and a more mainstream, younger legend-in-the-making with Demi, touring with my own band and doing my own music with my friends. I don’t know what more I could have asked for.
“Except for maybe a few more days to do laundry,” she swiftly added.