The Summer I Turned Pretty Author Wrote Taylor Swift a ‘Handwritten Note’ to Ask Permission to Use This Song on the Show

“I felt like she is someone who bets on women, and I felt like she bet on me,” Jenny Han said of Swift, 35.

Jenny Han always had a vision of Taylor Swift in her love stories.

The author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy — who executive produced two of the three To All the Boys movies and is the co-showrunner of the Prime Video series — joined Jenna Bush Hager on her podcast, Open Book, on Jan. 9 and revealed the true story behind the music in of TSITP‘s most iconic scenes.

In the season 1 finale of the show, which premiered in 2022, Conrad (Christopher Briney) steps up to dance with Belly (Lola Tung) at her debutante ball in a long-awaited romantic moment for the pair, and as she turns to see him join her on the dance floor, Swift’s “The Way I Loved You” played.

Han, 44, said she “knew what song I wanted” for that scene from the get-go when she was “pitching out the season.”

“I was kinda trying to, like, inception it into everyone’s heads that this is what we — that we need this,” she said, noting she was willing to do “whatever it took to get it.”

Christopher Briney as Conrad and Lola Tung as Belly in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ season 1. Peter Taylor/Prime Video

While she worked on getting permission, the Amazon Music rep Han was working with on the series gave her the idea to write a letter to Swift, 35, because she knew it was “really important” to the author to have the perfect onscreen moment.

“I don’t think anyone thought we were gonna get it, honestly,” Han said.

So she “wrote a handwritten note” to the singer and explained “how much it would mean — not just to me, but I thought to the fans. That was the gift I really wanted to give, because I’m like, they’re gonna go crazy for this.”

Swift ultimately gave her permission and the Taylor’s Version of the Fearless song was used — but not only that. “We were so lucky to get more than one [song],” Han remembered.

Swift later debuted “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” in the season 1 trailer in May 2022 and the season 2 trailer included a similar move as it marked the first tease of “Back to December (Taylor’s Version).”

“She really — I felt like she is someone who bets on women. And I felt like she bet on me,” the author said of Swift. “And I can’t say enough how thankful I am that she let us use her music. And I think she knows, too, her fans would like the show.”

More than a dozen Swift songs have been used in the show’s two seasons, including “Delicate (Taylor’s Version),” which remains unreleased as fans continue to await Reputation (Taylor’s Version).

Jenny Han and Lola Tung on set of ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ season 1. jennyhan/Instagram

Han also told Bush Hager — who posted a photo in March of her daughter Mila reading the first book in Han’s trilogy — that Fearless was what she listened to when she was writing the book trilogy, so much so that she “thought about dedicating one of [the books] to her at the time.”

She’d also tried to get a Swift song into one of the To All The Boys Netflix movies to no avail.

“It wasn’t even a thing that I could really push, but I really wanted it,” she said, especially since, “In the book, at the prom, they’re dancing to ‘Style.'”

“We’ve been so lucky to continue to get to use her music,” Han said of Swift, before teasing that the show’s long-awaited third season will be coming this summer.

Christopher Briney as Conrad and Lola Tung as Belly in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ season 2. 

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty can be streamed in full on Prime Video and season 3 is due for a Summer 2025 release.