“The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “Mean Girls” star Christopher Briney compares his character Aaron Samuels to a seesaw in Tina Fey’s latest rendition of the 2004 high school movie now translated into a quasi-adaptation of the Broadway musical.
As the film’s central heartthrob, Briney’s Samuels sits in front of Angourie Rice’s Cady Heron in calculus class where she falls for him from the get-go. But when her crush on him becomes apparent to Reneé Rapp’s Regina George, who dated him before Cady got to North Shore High, he ends up back in Regina’s clutches.
“He’s important in this story. He unintentionally stokes the flames of this feud and he becomes a little pawn in each of their games. Both Regina and Cady take their turns pushing him back and forth,” Briney told TheWrap. “It’s a bad analogy, but he’s good. He’s a good person at the end of the day. He’s one of the few people whose arc is not like good or bad. He’s just sort of there and he takes some blows.”
Despite his less active status as a character, Briney had fun breaking the fourth wall in scenes like Cady’s house party, set to the song “Someone Gets Hurt,” which Rapp sings. He wasn’t keen on singing in the movie musical like his costars though. “I wish I got to be a part of Kevin G’s rap. I think that’d be really funny. Obviously, there’s no reason for Aaron to be there but I would have loved to see it,” he said.
Once the singing requirement was removed, Briney came back around to the role through his desire to work with Tina Fey.
“It’s hard to not want to do and be a part of something like this [that’s so] iconic and cool. A big part of it is I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to work with Tina [Fey] again. That is one of the coolest things I can say that I’ve done in my life,” he said. “I like how Aaron specifically is this character [who] is a witness to everything. So it was just a place like, how could you not want to be there?”
He would break down laughing in the presence of Fey, whose writing he stuck to while throwing in an improvised reaction here or there.
“I don’t think I would ever touch Tina’s writing. I could never do something better,” he added. “There might have been a few moments where reactions and things like that were encouraged, and maybe a time or two there were some lines changed, but that was always from the other room because I can’t. It’s Tina’s words. I couldn’t do better.”
“So many of the things in this movie, and the humor of it, when you think about it for a second you’re like, ‘Wait, what are we doing? What’s the bit here?’ It’s really funny,” Briney said. “I remember when we were on the first day of calculus class and Tina was standing at the board. She’s so funny, man. She’s just so good at what she does. I was definitely laughing there, and I’m sure other times.”
As for where Aaron falls in the social hierarchy of North Shore’s teenage jungle Briney had a picture in his mind.
“I always thought he was a floater,” he said. “He’s friends with the people he plays soccer with [but] most often he’s sitting there. I don’t think he has strong beef with anybody. He really is cool with everybody.” But when asked about whether Aaron could end up in the Burn Book, he added, “Maybe not. I feel like at one point, because he and Regina, broke up there’s something in there.”
Briney made it a point not to rewatch the 2004 film in preparing for the role of Aaron because he felt he couldn’t recreate that performance.
“I just want to read the script and take whatever I get from the page and trust that Tina and our directors would push me in the right direction,” he said. “It’s different because I’m playing him and I don’t really know what that means yet.”
Director Samantha Jayne recalled not fully realizing the “whole Connie baby fervor around him” from his role in Prime Video’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
“It was like ‘My god, the power this boy holds is strong,’” Jayne said.
Director Arturo Perez thinks Briney’s charm is what solidified him in the role.
“Chris is so damn naturally charming. He’s just so charming. That is him. He is that cool,” Perez said “We had no idea [about his “Summer I Turned Pretty” fame]. We were out here making a movie with our friend. He’s just so real and that’s what people like about him. He’s humble.”
As for what’s next beyond the third season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Briney isn’t quite sure, but he wants to do something different.
“I would love to do a lot of different things. I’d love to do something out of a love triangle,” he said. “We’ve seen it. We just don’t need to see it anymore.”
