On an early December afternoon, I settled in front of my computer and made sure all my technology was working well. I knew Lana Condor would be audio only for our Zoom interview. That was fine with me. I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible. I kept my camera on in case Condor wanted to see me or my cat, hanging out in her cat tree, over my shoulder. So I was surprised when Condor appeared onscreen in a cozy yellow argyle sweater, her hair loose and tousled, her face open and warm. Her manicure was impressive—long, oval-shaped nails shined with a pale, shimmering polish. That’s one way to separate yourself from Lara Jean, I thought. Condor’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before character typically wears short, sensible nails befitting a teenage girl who enjoys baking.
“I just wanted to pop in and say hello face-to-face,” Condor told me. “But if it's okay, I might do audio only, because I'm doing it on my phone, and I'm worried that's going to be weird.” I was, perhaps oddly, touched by Condor’s thoughtfulness. It seemed like she wanted to make sure I knew she was emotionally present for the interview, even if the technology might get the best of her. She kept her camera on the entire time.
To All the Boys: Always and Forever, out on February 12, is the final installment of the much-loved Netflix original movie series based on Jenny Han’s book trilogy. In the first film, released in 2018, Lara Jean Song Covey’s younger sister Kitty mails out a collection of love letters that Lara Jean had written to five of her former crushes. They include Peter Kavinsky, who quickly becomes a current crush thanks to his deep brown eyes, endearing “whoa-whoa-whoa” habit, and steadfast sensitivity. Lara Jean and Peter, played by Noah Centineo, decide to pretend they’re in a fake relationship to make Peter’s ex-girlfriend jealous and...you can guess how the plot unfolds. I don’t typically watch material targeted toward young adult audiences, but Lara Jean and Peter’s chemistry demanded I pay attention. As soon as the credits rolled on my first viewing, I started the movie over from the beginning. I’m not alone—in October 2018, Netflix reported that the first To All the Boys was one of its most-watched original films ever, and many viewers settled into Lara Jean’s nostalgia-inducing reality more than once.
“Lara Jean has just been the biggest impact in my life,” Condor tells me. “I like the world that we got to make with To All the Boys. I like a world that is romantically driven and colorful and super quirky and loves pastels. Her sense of style and the things that she likes are unique and special, down to the pens she uses to write her letters, down to the bookmark she uses in her books. The tiny, tiny things I just love about her.”
At the time the first movie came out, I hosted a podcast called Thirst Aid Kit with Bim Adewunmi, a playwright and producer at This American Life. Our podcast was about all the ways pop culture shapes desire. We’d pick a male actor and examine his body of work, plus his general appeal, to provide pop culture analysis with a big spoonful of thirsty commentary. As women over 35, we had a largely unspoken rule that we wouldn’t discuss characters or actors under the age of 25, to avoid any ickiness. But To All The Boys was too good, too charming, too much a part of American culture for us to ignore. So we dedicated an episode to the movie, particularly to breaking down the appeal of Peter Kavinsky. And yet we also wanted to honor Lara Jean—and Lana Condor’s achingly believable portrayal of a girl falling in love for the first time.
As Hollywood churns out teenage characters with dark motivations, adult proclivities, and voracious sexual appetites, Lara Jean was a breath of fresh air—a teenage girl very much aware of modern-day high school expectations yet remaining true to herself, with hobbies ranging from baking cupcakes to watching ’80s rom-coms. Lara Jean writes letters when overwhelmed by feelings she can’t find a safe outlet for and has such an emotionally intelligent hold on who she is as a person, even when confused or hurt.
What struck me most in watching Condor’s press runs for To All the Boys is how she’s able to subtly differentiate herself from her character. Lara Jean’s wardrobe varies, but she’s known best for bright, cheerful colors, like a Candyland come to life—buttercup yellows, bubblegum pinks. On the red carpet, however, Condor has worn bold, vibrant shades—ruby red, radiant fuchsia, emerald green, inky black. After admittedly fanning the flames of rumors that her closeness with Centineo was more than a working relationship, Condor has pivoted to talking about the beauty of her real-life love instead. Her projects immediately following To All the Boys were the film Alita: Battle Angel and the series Deadly Class, both dark and action-packed gritty adventure pieces. Condor is letting us know, without disrespecting her beloved character, that to confuse her with Lara Jean would be a mistake.
Condor, 23, broke into the acting world relatively recently with the 2016 superhero movie X-Men Apocalypse. She’s grateful for the lessons she’s learned from her undeniable success. One of the most important is that she needs to be honest about how she’s doing with herself and those around her, especially when it comes to her mental health.
“I'm realizing now, particularly this year, that there's a lot of strength in showing people that everything is not always daisies every single minute of every single day,” she told me. Condor isn’t used to being vulnerable. In the past, she often hesitated to admit when she was going through something difficult, not wanting to worry loved ones or show the world anything but a sunny façade. It was right after the first To All The Boys came out and while she was working on Deadly Class that Condor realized she needed help with the burdens she was carrying.
“[The first movie] was received way better than I had ever imagined in my wildest dreams. It changed much of my life very quickly,” she said. “And then I was shooting this television show that was really dark.” Vacillating between movie promotion on the weekends and TV shooting on the weekdays started to feel like emotional whiplash, she explained. “I was just saying yes to everything because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you want to capitalize on it, and you want to feel like you're fully embracing everything. But I've never felt more horrible mentally. I was so burned out.... I would go home at night and I couldn't speak. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I would shake going to bed and shake waking up because it was just so much stimulation.”
Condor felt compelled to keep going, to amplify the naturally bubbly personality that is evident in our call, bursts of energy and laughter punctuating many of her responses. She wanted to keep giving until she had nothing left.
“I was on the phone with my team and I had this moment where I just was in tears, telling them that I don't feel okay. And they were all shocked because I wasn't open about my feelings,” she said. “No one knew. When I had that conversation with them, it was like a new beginning. Now I know the power of sharing that.” In addition to her team, Lana has leaned on her parents. “My mom and my dad are so supportive and we've had conversations about ‘Lana, you need to stop. You're clearly unhappy'…'Okay, let's figure out the root of that.’ My parents have been a great sounding board.”
Condor knows some people might dismiss her mental health struggles, chalking them up to “Champagne problems” given all the comforts that come with her success. But opening up in this way has been monumental for her.
“I'm talking about my mental health and my heart. And that's something that I completely threw away for the sake of others. So once I shared it and was vulnerable with my team, it was a huge change,” Condor said. “They really have helped me navigate the industry now in a much more healthy way, where I feel like I can do what I love and also be the person that I want to be for myself.”
Working through a history of body dysmorphia is part and parcel of Condor’s journey to becoming that person. She pointed to years of ballet when she was younger as a main factor in that body dysmorphia. “When you see yourself in a mirror constantly, and you're, like, wearing nothing, you can really just nitpick yourself to death, which is so unhealthy,” she said in a video for SELF. “When I stopped doing ballet and classes, I felt like that was the beginning of where I could start working on the body dysmorphia…[that] was the beginning of, Okay, I definitely need to heal because the way that I thought about myself when I was dancing was not healthy.”
Body dysmorphia, formally known in mental health as body dysmorphic disorder, involves an intense preoccupation with physical “flaws” that are barely noticeable to others or completely nonexistent, according to the Mayo Clinic. But anxiety and other negative feelings about these perceived flaws can really disrupt a person’s life, causing them to have an overwhelming and destabilizing focus on their appearance, sometimes avoiding social situations because of it or going to further and further lengths to “fix” themselves.
Healing from body dysmorphia has been a work in progress for Condor: “I'm not in a place where I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, it's over.’ I have to work on it every single day.” That work involves relying on her support system, engaging in therapy, and learning to love exercise for reasons other than aesthetics. “Working out in a healthy way has helped a lot because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel stronger. I used to work out constantly,” Condor said in her video. “Just go, go, go. And that was so unhealthy for me. So now I'm trying to do things that I just genuinely love and not in an overt, burnout way.” Zumba with her boyfriend of five years, Anthony De La Torre, makes the list, as does working with trainer Paolo Mascitti, whom she says pushes her, but just enough and not beyond the brink.
Although her experience with body dysmorphia feels very private, Condor shares it because she doesn’t want others who are going through the same thing to feel alone. “If someone were to come to me asking for advice about body dysmorphia and any sort of mental health, I would just say you have to treat yourself like your best friend,” she said. “You would never tell your best friend the things that you say to yourself in your darkest times. You would never in a million years. I think that we have to talk to ourselves kindly and gently.… I don't know where I stand with the afterlife, but I think this is it. This mind and this body is the one we get.”
Although leaving the world of ballet has helped Condor with body image, her livelihood presents some new challenges. When Condor and I began to talk about body image in Hollywood, the natural light in her dimmed a bit. She told me about a time she was on a photo shoot and someone insisted on showing her how to pose without a double chin.
“When it first happened, I felt horrible,” Condor said. “And then very quickly I was like, wait, wait, wait. That was very weird. This is not a normal position to be in. I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be like, So this is how you have to angle your body so you look skinnier.” She was able to move on quickly, but having dealt with body dysmorphia in the past gave the comment an extra sting, she said.
A lack of Asian representation in Hollywood has also contributed to Condor’s body image struggles. “I've had times where I will be in a [casting] room, and all the girls are blonde and blue-eyed, and [I’m] the only Asian girl there,” said Condor, who was adopted from Vietnam when she was four months old. “And you're like, ‘What am I doing? Do you have me here to fill a quota?’.… That can feel very obviously limiting.”
Condor is working on being gentle with herself when these moments get to her, instead of putting pressure on herself not to feel hurt. This is a lesson she picked up while reading Glennon Doyle’s latest book, Untamed. “The general message of it was that what makes being alive so awesome is that we do get to feel it all,” Condor said. “That's what makes us human. And I welcome that.”
One of the ways Condor has established the boundaries she needs is by buying a house in Seattle, away from the immediacy of Hollywood. “Moving to Seattle, I think, saved me a lot,” she told me. “I'm trying to make my world smaller.”
In Seattle, Condor has a sense of routine and community she didn’t have in L.A. “I feel more human,” she said. “Life is slower where I'm living now, and I have never felt happier, because I feel fuller.” She took me through a list of the “little things” that make such a big difference: She goes on walks with her dog, Emmy, who she got in the midst of what she describes as her “darkest headspace.” “I don't know what I would do without her,” Condor said, flipping her video so I could take a look at her furry saving grace. She drinks wine on the roof while neighbors drink wine on theirs. She has a coffee shop that knows her order. “Right next to the coffee shop is this little mom-and-pop bookstore that doesn't have a lot of books, but they order if you need it,” she said. (Thrillers are Condor’s favorite: “This sounds so sick, but my dad always says, ‘If there's the word ‘girl’ or ‘lost’ or ‘woods’ or ‘murder’ or ‘darkness’ in the title of a book, I'll just get it for Lana because I know that she'll like it.’”)
In this slower, fuller life, Condor has been exploring songwriting and singing with her boyfriend and a friend of theirs who quarantined with them for a couple of months. “One day [our friend] and Anthony were working on a project, and I just came down and shared a journal entry that I felt was close to my heart. And then we wrote a song about it.”
When Condor talked about the music she’s been creating, these “kind of sappy love songs,” she practically melted into her sofa. It felt like a friend was about to tell me her crush smiled at her in the hallway.
Condor said she doesn’t have any plans to release the music through a record company. “It's just a quarantine project that has become a really fun thing for me,” she explained. She did release the song that the journal entry inspired—“For Real,” on Spotify—letting loose lyrics about always coming home to the person she loves in a sweet, breathy voice.
The new experience of creating music, especially love songs with her boyfriend, has surprised Condor by revealing unexpected parts of herself. “I’ve learned I'm softer and more emotional than I sometimes think,” she admitted. “I've learned the power of expressing my emotions freely where I'm not doing it through a character. I'm just doing it as Lana, which is new and exciting.” It’s a divergence from acting, when she’s able to become someone else. “With the songwriting, everything is exposed. There's nothing this year that, at least speaking for myself, I feel like I can hide behind. It’s now or never to be authentic and speak your truth and take up your space and own who you are.”
Listening to how Condor speaks about her boyfriend, it’s no surprise that at times her feelings for him spill into song. “Anthony has been just everything. He is so great at communicating, and he genuinely wants to know how I feel and what's going on in my head, which [makes me] feel so loved and taken care of,” she said.
Though she stars in one of Netflix’s biggest original romance films, it’s the little things in a relationship that mean the most to Condor. “Anthony, every night or every morning, folds my PJs and tucks them under my pillow so that I don't have to go looking for them,” she told me. “That to me is the biggest expression of love. That's so much better than, I don't know, a hot air balloon.” Grand gestures can be gratifying, don’t get her wrong. But like her iconic character, she’s a sucker for seemingly small acts of devotion. “Lara Jean loves little gestures.… I think that's why I love To All the Boys. It starts with a letter.”
When I asked if Condor had any relationship advice for Lara Jean, she delivered—and then some. First, you should know that in To All the Boys: Always and Forever, Lara Jean and Peter get ready to go to college together until she begins to question if following Peter is the best move for either of them. Now for Condor’s sage advice to her character: “Make sure that the person that you love and the person that you want to be your partner wants to support you and wants to be on the journey with you. And doesn't ask you to change. And doesn't ask you not to focus on your future.”
She’s speaking from the experience of knowing how foundational a through-and-through supportive partner can be. “The stuff I have put [Anthony] through,” she said. “This poor guy.” She paused to, off camera, tell him she loves him. There have been the intimidating work events, the work nights she comes home exhausted and just wants to lie on the couch. “He’s been there and supportive,” Condor said. “Never once has he ever held me back. He always just wants the best for my future. He wants to be a part of it. That's what I would say to Lara Jean: If someone's making you choose [between them and] your career or your future and your success and your path and your journey, that's probably not the right person to be with.”
Saying goodbye to Lara Jean involved a fair amount of tears. Condor filmed her last scene for the final movie in Korea (where her character’s mother comes from). It was the end of a 16-hour day and Condor couldn’t stop crying.
“I don't even know if that made it into the movie, because I don't know how much of that really was usable,” she said. “Let's be honest: I was a complete mess.” In retrospect, she’s able to laugh about it. “I was having the best day ever working with my friends. And then my heart was also breaking at the same time, because I knew I was going to have to say goodbye to this character that has done so much for me and has just changed my life, has given me these insane opportunities, has just made me feel like I'm more connected to my community.”
As hard as it may have been to say goodbye to Lara Jean, Condor is excited about the future, including her goal to increase representation of people of Asian descent in Hollywood. “There are so many Asian stories, Asian American stories, that need to be told and need to be written. I do believe we're slowly but surely getting there,” she said, adding that she believes it’s happening in baby steps. “I've been having incredible meetings with production companies that are predominantly Asian, so it's exciting.” She also plans to continue her community outreach; Condor has developed a scholarship with the Asia Foundation that helps Vietnamese girls through high school. She’s become more open about discussing politics and social injustices without fear of losing fans and will push forward in that arena as well. “This past year I have lost a decent amount of followers because of me sharing my truth. Some people just don't like it, but those aren't people that I want to be following me anyway. So to me, it feels like good riddance.”
Condor is ready to break more boundaries too. “I don't exclusively want to tell one type of story. If I see a script that was not written for someone that looks like me but I know I can do it, then I will absolutely go really intensely hard and try to get cast,” she said. “I think it's so important to challenge Hollywood. For an industry that is incredibly creative, I think sometimes there's not a lot of imagination in the casting rooms, so you got to show them.”
Condor has a list of other creatives she’d love to work with for future opportunities—Sandra Oh, Taika Waititi, and Awkwafina among them. She dreams of being on a cooking show too. “Anthony always sees me when I'm cooking. I always talk to myself, like, ‘Okay, so this is what I'm doing.’ He's like, ‘Who are you talking to? There's no audience here, Lana.’ But I love it so much. I think it might be my secret talent.”
Ultimately, Condor has only gotten a taste of how far she can go, and she’s ready for more. “I’m open,” she said. “I’m open to it all.”
