Matt Cornett & Sadie Soverall On The Art Of Longing In Every Year After
There’s something undeniably irresistible about a great yearning romance. The stolen glances, the missed chances, the kind of connection that lingers long after two people part ways — it’s a formula that has captivated audiences for generations. Prime Video’s Every Year After, adapted from Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel, leans fully into that emotional territory, delivering a sweeping second chance love story that unfolds across years, memories, and the complicated realities of growing up in love with your best friend. At the center of the series are best friends Sam and Percy, played by Matt Cornett and Sadie Soverall, who bring the story’s emotional core to life with performances that feel both intimate and expansive. Whether the series succeeds overall may be up for debate on our timelines and BookTok (I think if you loved the book, you’ll enjoy the series too!), but the two young actors at the center are undoubtedly great together. And together, they navigate a relationship shaped as much by timing and circumstance as it is by chemistry, capturing the bittersweet push and pull that makes second-chance romances so compelling. The result is a series that understands the appeal of yearning (the word of the year) and that a slow burn love story we can project all of our nostalgia and young adult angst onto is exactly what the summer needs. For Cornett, best known from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Every Year After marks a chance to explore a more mature, emotionally layered character. Meanwhile, Soverall brings depth and vulnerability to a messy protagonist whose journey spans multiple stages of life — and mistakes. Of course, bringing a beloved book to the screen comes with its own unique pressures. The BookTok community surrounding this source material came with strong attachments to the characters and a clear vision of how they should look, sound, and behave. For Cornett and Soverall, that meant balancing fidelity to the novel with the freedom to make the roles their own. It also meant tackling some unexpected challenges along the way — including mastering accents (Soverall more than Cornett) and ensuring their performances remained consistent across different timelines and emotional stages. As audiences continue to gravitate toward romance stories that prioritize emotional connection over spectacle, Every Year After arrives at a moment when yearning is having something of a cultural renaissance. Whether it’s in literature, television, or film, stories centered on anticipation, longing, and unresolved feelings are resonating in a major way. This series taps directly into that appetite, offering viewers a romance that’s as much about memory and personal growth as it is about romance. Here, Refinery29 talks to Cornett and Soverall to discuss adapting a fan-favorite novel, the enduring appeal of yearning in romance, learning accents for their roles, and what they hope audiences take away from this emotional story. Refinery29: There have been so many recent shows, even just on Prime Video, in this young adult romance genre, like Off Campus, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and Maxton Hall, just to name a few. What would you say sets this show apart? Sadie Soverall: I think the scope of this show is really unique. I mean, we’re following these characters from 13 to their mid 20s, we’re seeing so much of their life, and it feels really nostalgic, looking into the past and then into the present for these characters. It’s a really beautiful, sweeping, yearning love story, and there’s mistakes made, and it’s not perfect. Matt Cornett: I second all that. I think getting to see these characters throughout their life, you see them in their most formative stages of their teenage years, and young adulthood, and going into their mid to late 20s. There’s so many formative chapters that you see in their lives that I think sets it apart a little bit, and was so much fun to play for us. I’m so excited for people to see. Sadie, you mentioned yearning, Matt. One thing about Sam is that he’s a yearner. MC: Boy, is he a yearner! He’s also this book boyfriend that fans of Every Summer After already held so dearly in their heads and hearts. Matt, talk about the pressure – if any – that comes with bringing to life that yearning and this guy so many people fell in love with on the page. MC: I think inherently there is a pressure that comes along with like bringing this this character to life when there’s already such a big beautiful fan base around it, but I think truly like the writing helps so much with us, you know. For us, I think obviously Carly’s writing in the book was such a great base to kind of start from, and then you know Amy’s the way that Amy adapted it into the show, I think that the writing made the yearning very easily, they wrote it very with a lot of yearning eyes, and so there I think there were probably some moments I threw a couple extra yearning loo
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There’s something undeniably irresistible about a great yearning romance. The stolen glances, the missed chances, the kind of connection that lingers long after two people part ways — it’s a formula that has captivated audiences for generations. Prime Video’s Every Year After, adapted from Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel, leans fully into that emotional territory, delivering a sweeping second chance love story that unfolds across years, memories, and the complicated realities of growing up in love with your best friend.
At the center of the series are best friends Sam and Percy, played by Matt Cornett and Sadie Soverall, who bring the story’s emotional core to life with performances that feel both intimate and expansive. Whether the series succeeds overall may be up for debate on our timelines and BookTok (I think if you loved the book, you’ll enjoy the series too!), but the two young actors at the center are undoubtedly great together. And together, they navigate a relationship shaped as much by timing and circumstance as it is by chemistry, capturing the bittersweet push and pull that makes second-chance romances so compelling. The result is a series that understands the appeal of yearning (the word of the year) and that a slow burn love story we can project all of our nostalgia and young adult angst onto is exactly what the summer needs.
For Cornett, best known from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Every Year After marks a chance to explore a more mature, emotionally layered character. Meanwhile, Soverall brings depth and vulnerability to a messy protagonist whose journey spans multiple stages of life — and mistakes.
Of course, bringing a beloved book to the screen comes with its own unique pressures. The BookTok community surrounding this source material came with strong attachments to the characters and a clear vision of how they should look, sound, and behave. For Cornett and Soverall, that meant balancing fidelity to the novel with the freedom to make the roles their own. It also meant tackling some unexpected challenges along the way — including mastering accents (Soverall more than Cornett) and ensuring their performances remained consistent across different timelines and emotional stages.
As audiences continue to gravitate toward romance stories that prioritize emotional connection over spectacle, Every Year After arrives at a moment when yearning is having something of a cultural renaissance. Whether it’s in literature, television, or film, stories centered on anticipation, longing, and unresolved feelings are resonating in a major way. This series taps directly into that appetite, offering viewers a romance that’s as much about memory and personal growth as it is about romance.
Here, Refinery29 talks to Cornett and Soverall to discuss adapting a fan-favorite novel, the enduring appeal of yearning in romance, learning accents for their roles, and what they hope audiences take away from this emotional story.
Refinery29: There have been so many recent shows, even just on Prime Video, in this young adult romance genre, like Off Campus, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and Maxton Hall, just to name a few. What would you say sets this show apart?
Sadie Soverall: I think the scope of this show is really unique. I mean, we’re following these characters from 13 to their mid 20s, we’re seeing so much of their life, and it feels really nostalgic, looking into the past and then into the present for these characters. It’s a really beautiful, sweeping, yearning love story, and there’s mistakes made, and it’s not perfect.
Matt Cornett: I second all that. I think getting to see these characters throughout their life, you see them in their most formative stages of their teenage years, and young adulthood, and going into their mid to late 20s. There’s so many formative chapters that you see in their lives that I think sets it apart a little bit, and was so much fun to play for us. I’m so excited for people to see.
Sadie, you mentioned yearning, Matt. One thing about Sam is that he’s a yearner.
MC: Boy, is he a yearner!
He’s also this book boyfriend that fans of Every Summer After already held so dearly in their heads and hearts. Matt, talk about the pressure – if any – that comes with bringing to life that yearning and this guy so many people fell in love with on the page.
MC: I think inherently there is a pressure that comes along with like bringing this this character to life when there’s already such a big beautiful fan base around it, but I think truly like the writing helps so much with us, you know. For us, I think obviously Carly’s writing in the book was such a great base to kind of start from, and then you know Amy’s the way that Amy adapted it into the show, I think that the writing made the yearning very easily, they wrote it very with a lot of yearning eyes, and so there I think there were probably some moments I threw a couple extra yearning looks in there, but there was definitely a lot written in there, and I just hope that people feel like we captured, you know, the Sam and Percy that they saw in their heads, and I know we’re both really proud of it.
I mean, men need to yearn more in general.
MC: I’m telling ya. Yeah!
Let’s talk spoilers! Percy’s big mistake. Sure, it’s not great to sleep with your boyfriend’s brother, but I feel like everyone gives her a bit too hard of a time about it. Sadie, is she really the villain in this story? Defend your girl.
SS: I think what is so brilliant about this story that really reflects real life. There’s so many characters who make mistakes, and I don’t feel like there are villains in the story. I feel like it’s people who have made mistakes are also good people. I think both things can be true at once. If you see the story and you know the book, and you know what happens, you know why Percy makes that decision. She makes this choice, and it’s really in the moment, and it’s also a choice she makes when she’s young, and I think a lot of people can relate to making a choice when they’re young that they don’t quite think through. It comes from a place of wanting to be loved. I understand that the discourse and the debate, and I think that’s what’s so brilliant about the stories, it makes you talk about these things, and it makes you debate.
It’s also so important to have to see a young girl not being perfect and making mistakes and that’s okay, especially a sexual mistake.
SS: Absolutely!
I want to talk about accents, because Matt, you are an American playing a Canadian, and Sadie, you are British playing an American. How much conversation and time and prep went into making sure those accents were accurate and true to your characters?
SS: I absolutely did my research. I love doing an American accent, and I feel like Percy’s one felt like really organic to me, because I’ve grown up watching American shows and American media, so it kind of just came quite instantaneously, but I did have to do my warm-ups every morning which you heard.
MC: I would hear them every single morning. [laughs] It was great.
SS: [laughs] We got into a good flow of it.
Matt, as a Canadian, I feel like the differences are so subtle, depending on where you are from. Were there any words that you out some Canadian into?
MC: I talked with [the showrunner] Amy a little bit about this, and me and Michael [Bradway who plays Charlie] talked a little bit about this. She was like, “I don’t really feel like I want you to put on a Canadian accent,” which, honestly, I don’t know if anyone would want me to [laughs]. You don’t want to hear me try to do an accent. I think that there were moments that I wanted to try and throw a little Canadianisms in there, and I wanted to, you know, say the ‘sorry’ and the ‘aboots’ and all that, but I think any moment that I would do that, our director would come up to me and be like, “Hey, maybe, maybe don’t do that.” [laughs]
SS: It organically filters in, because we were around the Canadian crew.
MC: Yeah! And also it was important, obviously, the book takes place in Canada, and we wanted to make sure the show took place in Canada and we wanted to pay homage to the Canadian roots of this story. And so I think that the show, in and of itself, really shows off Canada so beautifully, and it just paints such a beautiful picture of what Canada is. I love Canada, so I think that was enough. Luckily me and Michael didn’t really have to think about the accents of it all.
I was listening for a Canadian sowrry.
MC: I tried, I tried, but they were like, “maybe dial it back.” [laughs]
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