Lexi Underwood Traces Similarities Between Her ‘Cruel Summer’ and ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Characters: They ‘Seek External Validation’

thewrap.com:

Note: the following contains mild spoilers for “Cruel Summer” Season 2 Episode 1In Freeform’s “Cruel Summer,” Lexi Underwood stars as Isabella, a wealthy and well-traveled exchange student eager to kickstart the typical American high school experience when she arrives to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 1999 to stay with the Landry family.

While Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley) is initially hesitant to let the outsider into her tight knit community, their relationship intensifies throughout the coming months — until a sinister discovery threatens to tear it all apart.

With her parents abroad, Isabella is turns on the charm as she gets acquainted with the Landry’s — a trait Underwood recognizes from playing Pearl in “Little Fires Everywhere.” “Pearl and Isabella remind me of each other in a sense, because at the end of the day, when you strip down all the chaos, everything that’s happening in their lives and around them, they’re just two young girls that are looking for a sense of stability,” Underwood told TheWrap in a recent interview. “You see two young girls that I think also seek external validation from the parental figures that are around them that are their friends’ parents.”Just as Isabella’s parents in “Cruel Summer” are constantly working and have limited involvement in her life as Isabella has been in boarding school her whole life, Pearl’s mother, Mia (Kerry Washington) in “Little Fires Everywhere” is relatively removed from Underwood’s character as a single, working mother.