“Every Year After” Star Matt Cornett Defends Major Change to Percy and Sam’s Story from the Book (Exclusive)
“Every Year After” Star Matt Cornett Defends Major Change to Percy and Sam’s Story from the Book (Exclusive)
Julia MooreMon, June 22, 2026 at 2:42 PM UTC
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Sadie Soverall as Percy Fraser and Matt Cornett as Sam Florek in 'Every Year After'Credit: Cate Cameron/Prime
Warning: this post contains spoilers for Every Year After (now streaming on Prime Video) and Carley Fortune's Every SummerAfter.
In Every Year After, the Prime Video adaptation of Carley Fortune's debut novel Every Summer After, the reveal of Percy's big secret differs significantly from the book
Matt Cornett tells PEOPLE why he "loved" how the reveal played out onscreen despite being different from the book
Every Year After is now streaming on Prime Video
Percy and Sam's love story unfolds pretty differently onscreen than it did on the page.
In Prime Video's Every Year After, which adapted Carley Fortune's debut novel, Every Summer After, into an eight-episode series, there's a whole lot of angst and tension when Percy (Sadie Soverall) returns to Barry's Bay for the first time in a decade and reunites with her childhood best-friend-turned-first love, Sam (Matt Cornett). But inthe adaptation, there's some key context that Sam is missing.
The big reveal of the series is that Percy slept with Sam's older brother, Charlie (Michael Bradway), after he broke up with her over email before college. In Fortune's book, Sam has known for years about Percy and Charlie, but in the show, fans see him learn of the betrayal in real-time after he confesses his love for Percy.
"I personally love that he doesn't know," Cornett, 27, tells PEOPLE of the change for his character.
While fans "get to see him tell Percy that he knew" in Every Summer After, Cornett says, "For our show, something I love so much about it is you get to see [Sam] spiraling in a real, actual moment, right then and there."
Matt Cornett as Sam Florek in 'Every Year After'Credit: Cate Cameron/Prime Video
"It's not a story told of him spiraling, and you see him afterwards — you actually see it actively happening, and you see him start to go down the rabbit hole," Cornett says. "And lose his relationship with Charlie and kind of, somewhat, lose his relationship with Percy, and lose that trust with both of them — and feel the betrayal from both of them."
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"It was really fun for me to get to play," the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series star admits. "Because I think it inherently affects Sam in a severely different way, but I really loved it."
Another change from Fortune's book is the ending. Fans don't see Percy and Sam make things official as a couple in the TV show, and instead, it ends with a cliffhanger reunion at the Tavern.
"It left them like a question mark," Soverall, 24, tells PEOPLE of how she interprets that final scene. "I think they have a lot of things to work out."
Matt Cornett as Sam Florek, Sadie Soverall as Percy Fraser in 'Every Year After'Credit: Cate Cameron/Prime Video
In a potential season 2, Cornett says he "would be interested to, hopefully, see them explore their future together."
"I think they have to explore a much smaller scale version of what their friendship is first, and maybe set some boundaries, and define some things, and have some conversations," he says. "But, yeah, I would definitely be interested to see that exploration of eventually what we get to and what we see in One Golden Summer."
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EveryYear After is now streaming on Prime Video.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
