Exclusive Interview

Inside ‘Every Year After’s Biggest Book Changes With the EP & Author Carley Fortune

While Every Summer After was the blueprint, showrunner Amy B. Harris and author Carley Fortune will be the first to tell you that a few book changes were needed to bring Percy (Sadie Soverall) and Sam‘s (Matt Cornett) love story to life in Every Year After. (Warning: Season 1 spoilers ahead!)

One major difference from Carley Fortune’s novel that fans picked up as soon as the first trailer dropped was a present-day relationship between Delilah (Abigail Cowen) and Charlie (Michael Bradway). While Delilah had a major crush on Charlie when she was young, Harris explained that extending their potential love story felt completely “natural.” After all, book Delilah would be thrilled to find out that she got the attention of Barry’s Bay’s most eligible bachelor.

Calling Sam and Percy’s love story from the book “sacrosanct,” Harris revealed that her goal was to expand their romance, holding out on major moments like their first kiss to let the audience, including readers who thought they knew what was coming next, yearn for them to finally cross that threshold.

Some of Sam and Percy’s major milestones come in unexpected ways, but one key moment from the book never arrives: Sam’s proposal. In the book, Sam asks Percy to marry him in college during their first Thanksgiving break. Scroll to read our full conversation with Every Year After executive producers Amy B. Harris and Carley Fortune, breaking down the biggest Every Year After book changes.

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Swooon: How did the relationship between Delilah and Charlie come to be?

Amy B. Harris: Obviously, the book for us is sacrosanct, and we didn’t want to mess with Sam and Percy in any way, but as we were talking about what it could be to build out the series, the flirtation between Delilah and Charlie felt like something that was there when they were young. We just started talking about where we had placed both of them in their lives.

I always [look at characters and ask], “Who do you want to put in front of them that makes them sort of confront where they are?” I think Delilah and Charlie were really important to each other. Delilah is in a sort of perfect marriage, but is unhappy, and Charlie is really unable to commit, so that’s a natural place for both of them to come together. Figuring out what that’s saying about themselves, I think, was really important to us.

They had such great chemistry. I think we just knew right away, once we had cast those two people, that was something we had to chase.

Swooon: As kids, Charlie kisses Percy during a truth or dare in the book. In the show, he acts like he’s going to, then pulls away. What prompted that change?

Harris: We had an actor who was over 18 playing Charlie [Carson MacCormac] and an actor under 17 playing Percy [Juliette Hawk], so it felt uncomfortable for me as a producer. So that was like, for me, a no.

But then we actually started talking about it from the perspective of storytelling. What was interesting about it in the book was that it was a foreshadowing of what was going to come later. What we felt was sort of interesting in this one [was] it did what it needed to do in terms of Sam. It changed everything, and that’s what I thought was so beautiful, even [Charlie] going in to lean in, and that Percy was open to it. Percy knew right then and there it was changing everything between them, and so I thought from a storytelling perspective it actually really worked for the show and was a great change.

Carley Fortune: Yeah, you don’t need them to kiss for it to do the exact same thing.

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Harris: I mean, to me, it’s a little bit about driving the story forward for conflict in those last episodes, and also the challenges and suspense of when Sam will realize what has happened, and for the audience the mystery of that. I think for TV, that’s a bit more of an essential piece of the puzzle.

Charlie is, throughout the season, really confronting everything he’s been trying to push away. I mean, one of my favorite scenes for him, and it’s actually a personal scene for me, is Charlie talking about how he took care of Sam as a kid, and Sam didn’t know that. That is my relationship with my sister.

But he was sort of brushing that aside. I think some people might have called that depression. Like, he was doing all of these sorts of important caretaking things, but then did this sort of awful thing that he had to bury down. But then he did abandon Barry’s Bay and his brother, and to some degree, his mom. He has a lot of regrets about that.

What I love about Carley’s book, and what I really tried to do in the series for each of these characters, is watching people make mistakes and trying to come to terms with those mistakes in the present. I just felt like it allowed us to see it in series, what he had to go through.

Swooon: We also have a couple of minor changes to Percy and Sam’s love story. Why did you hold out on their kiss in the sleepover scene?

Harris: Keep the yearning going! Just keeping the yearning going, that is just drawing that out for the audience. It’s like, “I want this so much.”

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Swooon: In contrast to the book, Sam never proposes to Percy. Would you say that was out of character for the Sam of the series to propose, or was it something else?

Harris: That [proposal] felt really right to me in the book. Personally, he felt so young to me in the book. It felt like, “Oh, this is a boy who’s growing up and wants to make this commitment.” Somehow, in the series, seeing that younger Sam, I felt like he would have been ready to propose, I think. He wanted to say, “You’re my person, and I’m committing,” but I didn’t think he was ready to hand her the ring, because they are 18. Maybe that’s personally, for me, it just feels like, “Oh, those are babies,” but it felt more important that he was just stating, “I need this,” as opposed to trying to do the grand gesture at that moment.

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Fortune: I think that makes sense. It wasn’t something that I was like, “Oh, he doesn’t propose?” I felt like his proposal was really like another — I think Sam is more of a flawed character than a lot of readers do see, and I don’t think his proposal was well timed. He’s really fumbling the ball a lot at the end of their relationship.

Harris: That’s what I actually love about it. I know people always say, “Percy made this big mistake.” But what I loved about what Carley did in the book, and we tried to do in the series, is that Sam is really hot and cold in a way that is very destabilizing for Percy, and that’s a very hard relationship to be in.

Fortune: He’s a safe friend for her, but he is not a safe boyfriend.

Every Year After, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video