.png)
It's rare for a TV show to give its main character a new love interest in the second last episode. But The Summer I Turned Pretty is a special case. Those who are familiar with the show will know that Belly, aka Isabel Conklin, kind of needed this.
After three long seasons of flip flopping between two brothers she grew up with, she needed to get the hell out of there and meet someone completely different. Enter TSITIP's Benito.
Yes, we have one episode of the teen romance show left, and Belly is in Paris giving her best Emily Cooper impression with new boy Benito. But who is this new character? And who is Fernando Cattori, who plays him?
It all comes down to this.
Who is Benito in The Summer I Turned Pretty?
I'm assuming you're already up to date on the TSITP drama if you're here, but, in case you need a little refresher, here it goes.
Throughout season 3, Belly has been busy planning her wedding to Jeremiah while simultaneously falling back in love (as if she needed to) with his older brother Conrad. Naturally, that wedding doesn't happen. Although we are all, at this point, desperate for Belly and Conrad to get back together, it wouldn't exactly be appropriate moments after she doesn't marry his brother.
Narratively, then, it kind of makes sense that Belly goes off and does her own thing for a few episodes. In the books, Jenny Han kind of glosses over this period of Belly's life. We hear about it in letters from Conrad. And Benito gets only a passing mention.
“Speaking of news, [Laur] told me you met some Spanish guy named Benito, and he rides around on a scooter. Really, Belly? A guy named Benito with a scooter? He probably wears leather pants and has a long stringy ponytail. I don’t even want to know. Don’t tell me. He probably looks like a model and weighs 100 pounds and writes you poetry in Spanish. I don’t know what you see in a guy like that, but I don’t know what you ever saw in me either, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste, right?” he writes in one letter.
A few letters later, however, Benito seems to be out of the picture again.
“I heard you aren’t hanging out with that guy Benito anymore. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” writes Conrad.
Who will Belly choose?
In the show, we get to see a little more. She meets him after chasing down a thief in Paris using her AirTag (lol, am I right?). He is from Mexico. He's a photographer. He's got that wavy Timothée Chalamet look about him. In the penultimate episode, we see some of their European romance. He rides a scooter. He quotes Neruda. He's bad at darts. He wears a very nice leather shearling jacket. In other words, he's the perfect Fisher antidote for Belly.
Who is Fernando Cattori?
Fernando Cattori is a Mexican actor and director.
He got his start as an actor just last year with Untamed Royals, a Mexican thriller on Netflix. He followed this with With You In The Future, a Mexican rom-com on Prime.
Although he may be new to the industry, he's already made his mark. He was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2024 for his musical short film Nacimos Llorando (We Were Born Crying) and also created Recuérdame Viviendo (Remember Me Alive), which went on to become the most-watched advertising campaign in Mexico.
Instagram content
As Cattori told Schön!, his parents immersed him in Mexican culture as he was growing up.
“My parents wanted me to know my own country first; it was a non-negotiable, so I didn’t travel abroad much as a kid,” he said. “Instead, I plunged into Mexican culture hard.”
He has two siblings who are professional tennis players and he sometimes accompanied them on their tours. However, he was always more artistic. “The first time I held a camera, I was about seven,” he said. “My dad had just upgraded his VCR camcorder and casually handed me the old one. It used cassette tapes, so I kept recording and rerecording over the same one. Most of my ‘masterpieces’ with siblings and neighbours vanished almost instantly, swallowed up by the next experiment. But in a way, that ephemeral aspect still feels like the purest form of art.”
What are we missing 👀
As he wrote in his bio, “Eventually as a young closeted gay man he considered a career in acting – auditioned for college – didn’t get in.”
He went on to study Communication & Advertising at IBERO, a university in Mexico. He has worked on campaigns with Nike, Victoria, Bonafont, Coke, Staud, Cerveza Del Pacífico, Sofitel, NOWNESS, Forever 21, Michelob Ultra Hard Seltzer, Palacio de Hierro, Kris Goyri, Dolce & Gabbana, Raw Apothecary, GQ, Mélia, Berger and Puma LATAM.
Instagram content
Cattori also explained that he wasn't exactly prepared for just how big The Summer I Turned Pretty reall was. “Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting into until I stepped onto that massive set in Paris,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘What is happening to my life? How did I end up here?’ Even now, I don’t think I’ll fully grasp the experience until the season is out, people respond to it, and maybe even a couple of years have passed. What I do know is that it was magical, completely unprecedented in my life — and, I’d say, in the life of almost any actor in Mexico. It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience… That maybe, if I’m lucky, might happen again.”
Belly's final summer in Cousins is upon us — but which brother will she pick?
