Given that “British Columbia does not look like Ontario cottage country,” Fortune advocated for this fictional version of Barry’s Bay to be set on the opposite coast. “Setting is so key to me in my books,” she says. “As a Canadian, we get very used to seeing our cities represent other places, so let’s let British Columbia be British Columbia for once.” (To account for that subtle change in setting, Percy is now an American from Seattle—where she still lives and works—who used to spend her summers across the border in British Columbia.)
Rather than being a magazine editor, Percy is now an obituaries writer for a Seattle newspaper. “I loved the idea that she did a job that you could consider macabre or morbid, but it’s beautiful that you actually get to celebrate people and tell their stories,” Harris explains. But Percy, like in the novel, is still not using her voice to tell her own stories. “I was just interested in that connection to Sam and Charlie—that she could write [Sue’s obituary] for them, and at first being rejected by Sam to do that, and then that’s a little bit of an opening for them to get close again.”
“We’ll Be a Fine Line”
Not unlike The Summer I Turned Pretty, another Amazon YA hit that became famous for its high-profile needle drops, Every Year After is soundtracked by an eclectic mix of mainstream artists—Maggie Rogers, Lana Del Rey, Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons, and more, according to Harris.
“I have a 16-year-old daughter, but the truth is my musical taste definitively leans towards somewhere around 19 years old maybe, and always has. There’s certain music that emotionally speaks to me,” says Harris, who describes the sound of Every Year After as “both pop-y,” but with “a little bit of a bluegrass, Americana” feel. Dolly Parton, Sue’s favorite singer, features prominently in a couple key moments this season, but her songs were actually not the most difficult to license.
While writing the pilot, Harris decided she wanted the emotional climax of the season to be set to the title track on Harry Styles’ “Fine Line” album. “In my head, that was the song, and then I was told Harry Styles is really hard to get,” she recalls. “I have a friend who is very, very high up at Universal, and I was able to call her and say, ‘Whatever it takes, whatever the money… I have to have this song,’ because I didn’t know what I would do [without it].”
One Golden Summer
Even before cameras rolled on the first season, the creative team discussed the possibility of adapting One Golden Summer, Fortune’s sequel about Charlie’s love story, which Harris confirms would be the basis of a potential second season. “There were definitely things that we did in the first season that we were intentional about,” Bradway teases. Not only is the famous “banana boat” featured, but Bradway also “made sure that [Charlie] acted a certain way” in relationships, “because we knew that [his love interest] Alice was going to be coming next season.”
