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‘Every Year After’s Matt Cornett & Sadie Soverall Break Down Sam & Percy’s Decade of Yearning
They say you never forget your first love, but it’s not that simple.
This summer, Prime Video took us to Barry’s Bay, a real-life town nestled on the tip of Canada’s scenic Kamaniskeg Lake. Described as “one of the most beautiful spots in the world — one that the whole world hasn’t found out about yet, which is kind of what makes it so special,” Barry’s Bay has held a special place in beloved BookTok author Carley Fortune‘s heart for quite some time.
In her debut novel, Every Summer After, which has come to life on-screen as Every Year After, Fortune weaves a sweeping web of nostalgia, regret, and reconciliation into the perfect summer romance. Percy Fraser (Sadie Soverall) may seem to have it all together, but she’s felt unanchored for a decade. When she returns “home” to Barry’s Bay and reunites with her childhood best friend and first love, Sam Florek (Matt Cornett), Percy must reckon with her past.
When the loss of Sam’s mother, Sue (Elisha Cuthbert), brings Percy back to the lake town, she is forced to confront a secret that ended her relationship with Sam and severed her ties with Barry’s Bay. Somehow, nothing — and absolutely everything — is exactly how she left it. Suddenly, the boy who has lived firmly in only her memory for years now is standing right in front of her — and he has a girlfriend.
Photographer: Avery Thompson
The thing is, both Percy and Sam hurt each other deeply during their formative years. While Percy betrayed Sam, he was hot-and-cold throughout their entire, albeit short-lived, teenage romance. As Fortune told Swooon, “He’s a safe friend for her, but he is not a safe boyfriend.” The two clearly found the right person early on; they just have a little growing up to do before it’s the right time.
After all, sometimes all you need is a second chance.
While it took over a decade for Sam and Percy to graduate from yearning to full-on romance, we fell in love with Matt Cornett and Sadie Soverall from the moment Noah Kahan‘s “Northern Attitude” started playing at the top of Episode 1. That’s why we’ve made the Barry’s Bay duo the next actors to take center stage for Swooon‘s Sizzle Reel spotlight, our selection of stars who we’ve deemed the best of the best in the world of romance on television.
Coming of Age
Percy, portrayed by Juliette Hawk during her younger years, arrives in Barry’s Bay for the first time in the summer of 2011, when she is just 13. On the dock of her new lakehouse, the Florek brothers, Sam (Clarke Blue) and Charlie (Carson MacCormac, later Michael Bradway), immediately catch her attention. While embarrassed when Charlie suggests that the two of them “play,” they become instantly inseparable.
“I think from the first moment they met each other, I remember in the book Percy’s like, ‘Who is this guy?'” Soverall tells Swooon. “There’s this immediate attraction and connection.” The more Percy and Sam get to know each other, the more they find that their interests overlap. “I think they’re both nerds and dorks in their own ways, but in the best ways,” Cornett explains, “and they immediately bond over that.”
As Soverall put it, “It very much just feels like their souls are kind of made at the same thing.”
Of course, what starts as a friendship becomes more complicated as outside influences get involved over the years. When Delilah (Hazel Bartlett-Sias, later Abigail Cowen) attempts to make Percy and Sam kiss during a game of truth or dare, Charlie steps in instead. While Charlie doesn’t actually kiss Percy, letting her know she has to wait a few years before they go down that path, the mere possibility makes Sam admit to himself that he sees Percy as more than a friend.
“He wants to kiss her, but he’s so nervous and so shy about it,” Cornett reveals. “Then seeing Charlie come in — it’s that moment of wanting to be the person that can do it. I think maybe that’s the moment that he admits it to himself, but I think he knows that there’s a slow attraction growing, and this interest in her has continuously grown as he’s gotten closer with her.”
For Percy, the realization is a little bit more gradual. While the subtle yearning starts during her first summer in Barry’s Bay, Soverall marks the scene where their young actors jump into the water, and she and Cornett emerge as the shift in Percy’s perspective on Sam. That is to say, the all-consuming crush forms “when she comes back from that summer, and she sees Sam as a young man.”
Photographer: Morgan Pryor
For both, their yearning feels unrequited until their impromptu sleepover, which happens after Percy is too scared to stay the night in her cottage alone after watching The Blair Witch Project. “There’s no thoughts in the back of either of their minds that anything’s gonna happen,” Cornett tells Swooon. “Inherently, it’s like, ‘Oh no, this is gonna create something between the two of us.'” That said, Soverall says that moment “comes completely innocently.”
What’s not so innocent? Sam and Percy’s flirty anatomy lesson.
Looking back at filming the scene that changes everything for Percy and Sam, Soverall reveals, “We did this in our audition over Zoom, [and] there’s the action as well… You have to figure out a way to do that where you can have the intimacy without it feeling awkward over Zoom.” When it came to filming the real deal, Soverall shares, “We did that scene for like eight, nine hours… Matt is so incredible and so warm, and made it really fun and really comfortable.” According to Cornett, they sang songs from Moana and Taylor Swift‘s “Red” to make things less awkward.
By the time they finally officially get together, the two have reached the summer before college. Only, Sam doesn’t have all summer to give to Percy. He’s enrolled in a summer program without telling her. Once there, he realizes that it’s harder for him to be attached to Percy but not physically with her than it is to be without her entirely. Cue: Sam’s brutal email, and Percy’s absolute banger of a line: “Tell [Sam] this is Percy, his ex-girlfriend, and you can’t break up with someone over f**king email.”
“Something about Sam that I find very interesting is he’s the type of guy that has such an insane level of care for Percy that I think he gets so scared to get too close to her because I think he’s afraid he’s gonna break her heart,” Cornett explains. “There’s this constant push and pull with himself, where they get close, and then he pulls away, and it’s like this constant battle between his head and his heart. He knows he wants Percy, but I think he’s so afraid to mess things up.”
Grieving their relationship, Percy gets drunk with Charlie, who tells her, “You deserve better, and when he gets back in town, I’m going to kick his ass.” By the end of the night, the two hook up and decide to keep the whole thing a secret from Sam. “It was very loving in the moment, but I think in terms of great loves, Sam is very much the great love of her life,” Soverall confesses.
When Sam returns to Barry’s Bay, professing his love to Percy and asking her for another chance, she can’t in good conscience let herself back into his life. Instead, she says goodbye, but that invisible string between them remains.
‘You Came Home’
A decade passes, and their love doesn’t simply linger quietly over the years. It hurts. Maybe that’s why Sam tells Percy, “You came home,” when he sees her in the kitchen of The Tavern that first time, instead of asking her where she’s been all these years. It also slips his mind to tell Percy about his girlfriend, Taylor (Roan Curtis).
After Percy gets to know her, it’s only a matter of time before Sam calls things off with Taylor off-camera. While we don’t know for sure what Sam told her, especially since he had previously been planning to propose, Cornett hypothesizes, “I think he was honest. I think she knew because I think she probably picked up on some things, and Sam, at that point in his life, has realized that honesty truly is the best policy… He finally just said, ‘I can’t do this.'”
According to Cornett, the confession could have gone a little something like this: “Being back here brought up a lot of things, and being around Percy again brought up a lot of things. And I think I’m still in love with Percy.”
Once Taylor’s out of the picture, there’s still one major roadblock for Percy and Sam: Percy and Charlie’s secret. In the book, Percy finds out that Charlie had told Sam about their hookup long ago. However, the adaptation shocks readers by revealing that Sam finds out about the secret for the first time from Percy.
Why hold out a decade on the secret that’s eating you alive? Soverall explains, “For [Percy], it’s all that she could do. I think what’s also really interesting about the show is there’s also this element of mental health that is highlighted… For her, it was the right time. When these tragic events happen, when people die… a lot of the masks and the pretense that you put up go, and you realize that you’re just alive, and that life is short.”
Cornett adds, “This whole secret she’s been keeping has changed a lot for Sam [when] he finds out, maybe the same for Percy [when] they’re able to talk about it. There are a lot of things that they need to have conversations about and reconcile before it can truly be the perfect time [for them to be together]. I know for Sam, this moment feels like the right moment because he’s been able to finally allow himself to fully feel these feelings he’s been feeling for so long, and not let the rest of his life be messy and not let everything else get in the way.”
So what’s next? Ahead of a potential Season 2, the duo reveals their hopes for Sam and Percy’s relationship going forward. “I hope that they have a bit of a friendship,” Soverall admits. “I think they need to decompress. It’s been very intense. I would love to see them have a bit of fun together.”
“A lot of conversations probably need to happen, but I think first, let’s have some lightheartedness. Let’s just be able to prove to ourselves that we can have fun together again, and maybe that first conversation has nothing to do with their relationship,” Cornett says. “I think it is going to be the start of a new chapter for them, and a new version of what their relationship looks like. Inherently, whenever you break up with somebody and then come back, it’s never going to be exactly what it was. It’s going to be a new version of that, and sometimes it’s better, and sometimes it’s not.”
Even with all of life’s detours that have kept them apart, Percy and Sam have found their way back to each other. They’ve both found their way home.
Every Year After, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video
