We were joined back on the Popternative show by Matt Cornett (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Summer of 69) to discuss his new series, Every Year After, the romance drama based on Carley Fortune’s 2022 bestselling novel, Every Summer After. The series premiered on Prime Video on June 10 with all 8 episodes.
The series also stars Sadie Soverall (Saltburn, Fate: The Winx Saga), Aurora Perrineau (KAOS, Westworld), Abigail Cowen (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Fate: The Winx Saga), Michael Bradway (Chicago Fire, Marked Men), Joseph Chiu (Fear Street: Prom Queen, Motorheads), and Elisha Cuthbert (Girl Next Door, Happy Endings).
Matt Cornett stars in Every Year After as Sam Florek, which unfolds over six years and one pivotal week in Barry’s Bay, a cozy lake town in Canada. The series follows Persephone “Percy” Fraser (Soverall) across two timelines: childhood summers in Barry’s Bay, where she falls for Sam, and a present-day storyline a decade later, when a funeral brings her back home and forces her to confront the secret betrayal that shattered their relationship.
Portraying Sam at different stages of his life gave Cornett the opportunity to explore the character’s evolution over time: “I’m playing him [at] different ages. I’m playing him at his teenage years as well as in his late 20s. So, inherently, it almost feels like you’re playing two different characters that just share the same core. [It was] lot of fun and definitely a new challenge that I’ve never experienced before.”
Cornett carefully prepared for each scene based on where Sam was in the timeline: “I had to take into consideration all these different things. There would be days where I’d get there in the morning and I’d play [Sam at] 16-years-old and then after lunch I’m playing 28. [It was so] many things to keep up with. I kept a binder with all eight episodes in it and I [used] post-it notes to color coordinate each age and character relationship. So if I was in a scene at 16 with Percy, there were two specific colors for that. And if I was 28 with Percy, there were two different colors for that. [I tired] to keep those things organized so I could cross reference and go back and forth between the ages, the stories, and where Sam and Percy’s relationship [stood].”
Watch the full conversation with Matt Cornett below.
Every Year After is streaming on Prime Video.
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