Lana Condor is all in for a To All the Boys spinoff! While speaking to ET this month, the 23-year-old actress (who portrays Lara Jean Covey) revealed that she’s delighted by reports that the Netflix franchise could continue with a spinoff series focused on her character’s younger sister, Kitty Covey (Anna Cathcart).
“I think it would totally make sense,” Condor told ET’s Denny Directo via Zoom. “I think Kitty is… truly just a scene stealer.”
While Condor said that no one has approached her about the project — and noted that she doesn’t “really know anything about it” — she does think the series is something that fans would be excited to watch.
“I remember when we were doing the press junket for the third movie, everyone was asking [Anna], ‘Is this something that you would be interested in?'” Condor recalled. “I would totally support it if it’s something that comes to light.”
Whether or not the spinoff comes to fruition, Condor is grateful for all that the three-movie franchise gave her over the years.
“The biggest blessing out of being a part of this franchise that I really truly love… is the people that I get to meet on the streets who come up to me… and they immediately want to share with me the way that they could relate to the films and the way that they were seen and represented in those films,” she said. “I love people and I love to hear their stories. That has been a really, really big gift.”
Condor, who said she “couldn’t be more pleased with just the general run of the three movies,” is also thankful that the flicks put her on the Costume Designers Guild’s radar. The actress is hosting its annual awards show Tuesday night, and couldn’t be more excited about the gig.
“This is the first year that the show is going virtual, and I feel like that is very, very exciting,” she said. “Oftentimes you see this and you see everyone’s dolled up, and that’s a great time, but then it feels a little bit more intimate… It feels really accessible and relatable, which I really love.”
Condor called her hosting duties “crazy,” adding that she “never thought that I would be doing this.” Now that she’s doing it, though, Condor is focused on putting a spotlight on Asian designers.
“Something that’s very huge and important to me is — particularly during this time, but always has been — is to wear pieces that support small, locally-owned businesses, particularly ones that have Asian designers,” she said. “Something that’s important is for me to wear clothes that I feel emotionally connected with and emotionally connected with the designers and the way that they were made. That’s definitely been a focus of mine.”
Condor’s commitment to supporting Asian designers comes amid a surge of racist incidents against Asian Americans, which have skyrocketed since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate, which was created in response to the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes amid the pandemic, released a report stating that it received 3,795 reports of incidents between March 2020 and February 2021.
“Seeing friends and family and even people marching in the street that I don’t know… makes me hopeful that we aren’t being ignored as much as I think the violence against Asians has been in the past,” Condor said. “I think that that’s that silver lining. I choose to be optimistic, because if I’m not, then I’m not going to get out of bed.”
In addition to her support of Asian designers, Condor said she’s “now more than ever” refocused her career by only taking on projects that “show fully-fleshed, three-dimensional, beautiful, Asian American stories, and are not leaning into the stereotypes or the false narratives that I think I’ve heard before in the world.”
“I’m very specific about what I choose because representing is not something that I shy away from. It’s something that I genuinely feel like is my passion and something that I love,” she explained. “I’m going to continue to do my work with The Asia Foundation to help give girls education in third world countries. I have all these big plans, and sometimes I feel like, ‘Oh my God. How could I do it all?’ But then, I believe in myself, and I’m like, ‘I can do this.'”
