Malin Akerman and Three More Join Netflix’s This Summer Will Be Different

Netflix’s This Summer Will Be Different is expanding its ensemble as production continues on the drama adapted from Carley Fortune’s novel. Malin Akerman, Megan Follows, Nadine Bhabha and Matias Lucas have joined the series, giving the Prince Edward Island-set romance four more characters to fold into its multi-summer story.

The newcomers arrive alongside established leads Sophie Nélisse, Francesca Reale and Roby Attal. Jordan Rodrigues, Jude Wilson, Natalie Brown, James Tupper, Tom Barnett and Celia Owen are also part of the cast.

For a show built around an emotional complication that is simple to explain and presumably much harder to live through, an expanded supporting cast matters. The premise centers on Lucy, played by Nélisse, as she navigates her twenties and experiences her first serious love. The central wrinkle: that love is with the brother of her best friend, played by Reale. Attal plays the brother, the person Lucy was never meant to fall for. Romance has rarely met a boundary it did not immediately attempt to turn into a dramatic obstacle course.

The four newly announced roles

Akerman will play Aunt Stacy. Follows has been cast as Cherly, while Bhabha plays Farah and Lucas plays Carter. Character details beyond those names and roles have not been disclosed, so it remains unclear precisely how each will connect to Lucy, her best friend or the forbidden relationship at the center of the series.

Malin Akerman joins as Aunt Stacy. Her recent television work includes Netflix’s The Hunting Wives, and she is also known for Billions.
Megan Follows will play Cherly. Her credits include Anne of Green Gables and Buried in Barstow.
Nadine Bhabha takes the role of Farah. She has appeared in Heated Rivalry and Slo Pitch.
Matias Lucas is set to play Carter. He previously appeared in The Order.

An aunt can be many things in a romance: confidante, truth-teller, keeper of inconvenient family history, or the person who sees the entire disaster forming from three rooms away. The series has not said which version Aunt Stacy will be, and it would be premature to turn a character name into a theory. Still, Akerman’s casting adds a recognizable performer to a group that already spans both the younger romantic leads and a wider adult ensemble.

Follows’ involvement also places a performer closely associated with Canadian screen storytelling in a production that has been filming in Canada. Bhabha and Lucas round out the additions, though the show has not outlined whether Farah and Carter are friends, relatives, neighbors, romantic complications or simply people unlucky enough to be caught near a plot fueled by a best friend’s brother.

From Prince Edward Island to Toronto

This Summer Will Be Different previously filmed on Prince Edward Island and is now filming in Toronto. That production move is notable because Prince Edward Island is not merely a backdrop in the show’s setup. The series is described as a sun-soaked romance unfolding over multiple summers on the island, making its coastal setting part of the atmosphere surrounding Lucy’s relationship.

Toronto’s role in the shoot has not been specified, and there is no indication that the story itself is abandoning Prince Edward Island. Film and television productions commonly work across more than one location for practical reasons, but the available details do not identify which scenes, settings or story periods are being made in either place. What is clear is that production is underway rather than sitting indefinitely at the casting-board stage.

The multiple-summers structure gives the adaptation room to treat romance as something that changes with time rather than as a single decisive weekend. Lucy’s twenties, her friendship, and her connection with Attal’s character can all evolve across those seasonal returns. The format also creates an obvious tension: even if two people try to leave a feeling behind, summer has a habit of coming back around with suspiciously good lighting.

The creative team behind the adaptation

Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart are adapting Fortune’s book for the screen. Both serve as showrunners and executive producers, placing them at the center of the series’ creative direction as well as its production leadership.

Fortune is an executive producer, as are Jennifer Kawaja, Elise Cousineau and Samantha Levine for Sphere Media. The novelist’s executive-producer role gives the original author a formal connection to the screen version, though no further information has been provided about how the adaptation will approach particular plot points, character arcs or the book’s structure.

That distinction is worth keeping in view as casting updates arrive. A television adaptation can preserve a novel’s basic premise while changing the rhythm of scenes, expanding supporting characters, or using the extra time of episodic storytelling to explore relationships from additional angles. At this stage, the confirmed facts concern the premise, the core cast, the new supporting players and the creative leadership—not episode counts, a release window or a detailed account of what will differ from the book.

A familiar lane for Netflix, with its own seasonal premise

The project joins Netflix’s broader collection of romantic dramas drawn from books. The platform’s best-known example is Bridgerton, which is preparing for its fifth season. Other book-based romance titles on the service include Virgin River and Forever. Meanwhile, the romantic drama Ransom Canyon was recently canceled.

Those series are not templates for what This Summer Will Be Different will become. They do, however, show that adaptations can accommodate very different scales of romance: period courtship, small-town ongoing drama, coming-of-age emotion and stories shaped by place. Fortune’s adaptation appears positioned around its own particular ingredients—Prince Edward Island, returning summers, a woman entering a new period of adulthood, and feelings complicated by loyalty to a close friend.

Cast announcements are also a reminder that television projects gain definition in layers. The initial hook tells audiences whose heart is in danger; the ensemble starts to reveal the social world around it. Aunt Stacy, Cherly, Farah and Carter may ultimately be pivotal or peripheral, but their arrival indicates that the production is filling out the lives beyond the central trio. That is often where a romance finds its pressure: family members, friendships, past connections and the people who cannot help noticing when someone is making a spectacularly risky decision.

For readers tracking entertainment casting more broadly, voice and performance announcements can similarly change how an upcoming project is imagined, as seen with Stephen Root’s confirmed Grand Theft Auto 6 role. In this case, the additions do not yet disclose the full shape of the characters, but they make the world of This Summer Will Be Different more populated as filming proceeds.

What remains unknown

Netflix has not announced a premiere date for This Summer Will Be Different. No platform release timing, episode total or trailer information has been provided in the available details. There is likewise no confirmed breakdown of the four new characters’ relationships to the leads.

For now, the concrete update is the four-person cast expansion and the ongoing production in Toronto after earlier work on Prince Edward Island. Nélisse’s Lucy remains the focal point of the story, with Reale and Attal anchoring the relationship dilemma around her. Akerman, Follows, Bhabha and Lucas now join an ensemble ready to make one already dangerous romantic situation considerably more crowded.