For Abigail Cowen, being the girl of the moment means channeling emotion and finding herself in Amazon Prime Video’s Every Year After.

BOOK-TO-SCREEN adaptations are having a moment this season, and few know it better than Florida-born Abigail Cowen (@abbeycowen), who stars as Delilah in Prime Video’s adaptation of Carley Fortune’s New York Times bestselling novel Every Summer After.

The show, which captures the nostalgia of teenage summers, is an eight-episode arc that goes far beyond the traditional teen romance genre. For Cowen, it is the emotions and world Fortune created that drive the story.

“The relationships and character development are really at the center of everything,” she notes. “I think what really stood out to me is the fact that we get to go back in time and see these characters when they were younger. You get to really see the why behind their choices as adults and the experiences that shaped them.”

Cowen is no stranger to adaptations, previously starring as Bloom Peters in Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga and Dorcas in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and is acutely aware of the expectations and challenges while honoring a character that already exists in the readers’ minds.

“I feel a huge responsibility to respect what readers love about the character,” she shares. “At the same time, acting requires bringing in an authenticity, so it’s about finding a balance between those two things.”

Of course, Cowen shares that she didn’t realize the gravity of the role when she auditioned for it. “We didn’t know it was Every Summer After. They had it under a code name, so I didn’t know who or what I was auditioning for,” she shares. “Once I found out, I read the book and immediately understood why people connected with it. The story feels intimate and universal, and I was just super drawn to its honesty. I’m just so excited to be a part of something that has such a lovely fan base.”

The story follows Percy and Sam through six transformative summers in the fictional Canadian town of Barry’s Bay. Along the way, the pair deal with many firsts and the intertwined lives of their friends, including Cowen’s Delilah.

“I was most excited to explore Delilah’s emotional journey and the relationships at the heart of the story,” Cowen shares. “The experience was incredibly collaborative, and there was so much care put into honoring what readers love about the book.”

While both Cowen and her character share a deep sense of loyalty, Cowen says she sees a distinction between the two. While Delilah often clings to the past, the actress says she has come to appreciate the importance of letting go and moving forward. It was that emotional complexity that drew her to the role, and she explored her character.

“My goal was to stay true to the character while bringing my own humanity to her,” she says.

While the production itself took Cowen far from her Florida roots, she quickly embraced her Canadian surroundings, crediting the cast and crew with making the experience feel like home.

A fitting theme in both the novel and show explores the passage of time, a sense of belonging, first love, second chances and the power of place. Though Cowen may have spent her summers further south, her personal experiences were pretty similar—time spent outdoors, in the water and surrounded by the people she loved, similar to the magic of Barry’s Bay and a connection she believes audiences will feel as well.

“Those relationships help define who we become. Even years later, the emotions tied to them can feel incredibly immediate, and I think that’s something a lot of people relate to,” she shares.

Though Cowen remains careful not to reveal too much ahead of the show’s release, she admits that some of the series’ most powerful scenes are the emotional exchanges between characters that have stayed with her long after the cameras stopped rolling and will hopefully stay with viewers.

 

 

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