Belly-Conrad shippers, this is for you. Lola Tung and Christopher Briney, who play Belly and her main love interest, Conrad, in Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, felt the sparks right away. At least, according to Jenny Han. And since she wrote both the TSITP and the To All the Boys series, she would know a meet-cute when she sees one.

“It really felt like [their chemistry] was popping off the screen right away, honestly,” Han recently told E! News of the first Zoom with both Tung and Briney.

The pair was put together for a chemistry test, in which producers look at how two actors interact as their characters to see if they’d be a good fit together. Usually it’s done in person, but Han, also the showrunner on Amazon’s adaptation of her novel The Summer I Turned Pretty, had to make it work virtually. “It was the first chemistry read I had done over Zoom, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work?’” she said. “Obviously, it’s more enlightening to be in a room with people and see how they connect and see how they look together and what the energy is.”

Turns out, she wasn’t the only nervous person on that call. Tung was “intimidated” by Briney during the Zoom, she revealed. “He was such a good Conrad when we read together, and he seemed so cool,” Tung told E!. “I just remember reading and being like, ‘Wow, this guy is really great.’”

Once they got to the set, though, everything was easy. “He’s so kind and so sweet and a little more on the shy side,” said Tung of her costar. “Working with him was just so easy because he’s a great actor and a great person.”

Once the leads were cast, the hunt was on for someone similar enough to Briney to play Conrad’s younger brother Jeremiah. “Once you pick a Conrad, you are trying to find a Jeremiah that matches and feels like they could be brothers,” Han said. “They are mirroring them a little bit.”

The role of the third side in this love triangle went to Gavin Casalegno. “Jeremiah is a character that doesn’t try hard,” said Han. “He is just so comfortable in his own skin and Gavin has so much Jeremiah in him, it felt like a really natural match.”