Reminder: Noah Centineo Will Be in Netflix Rom-Com 'Sierra Burgess Is a Loser'
If you’re one of the zillion people completely captivated by Noah Centineo from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, I have some very exciting news: The 22-year-old and his perfectly-coiffed hair will be starring in another Netflix rom-com that premieres next week called Sierra Burgess Is a Loser.
Shannon Purser (a.k.a Barb!) stars as the titular character, a whip-smart member of the marching band who’s teased by a popular girl named Veronica (Kristine Froseth). Somehow, hot jock Jamey (Centineo) gets Sierra’s number, and they start a relationship over text. The twist, though, is that Jamey thinks he’s actually chatting with Veronica. So Sierra does what any normal teen would do in this situation: rope Veronica into a full-on Cyrano de Bergerac scheme to keep her identity hidden from Jamey for as long as possible. Ya know, normal adolescent shenanigans.
At first, it feels a little disappointing to see Purser play a character so afraid a guy won’t like the real her that she hides behind a cheerleader—but Sierra Burgess tackles the issue of self-identity with poignancy and empathy. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a teenage girl and to look like this?” Sierra says at one point, tears streaming down her face. It’s a gut-wrenching moment that will hit close to home for anyone who struggled with confidence in high school, or even now.
Watch the trailer for yourself, below:
As for Centineo’s character, Jamey, he’s just as tall and charming and smiley as he was in To All the Boys, so rest easy. The film also has a distinct eighties vibe that harkens back to the classic rom-com days of Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles. Lindsey Beer, who wrote the screenplay for Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, says that isn’t a coincidence.
“I wanted it to feel like a little bit of an ode to those eighties movies the same way Stranger Things is an ode to eighties movies: something that drew from the strength of the template of those movies but obviously goes beyond it with a modern twist,” Beer tells Glamour. “The emphasis of the love story really being on the women—the friendship love—as opposed to romantic love.”
She also assures Glamour that Sierra is the hero of this film—even though at first it may seem like she’s hiding behind Veronica. “I was really excited to write a character—in a movie that was down to a much more human level—where just kind of by virtue of being herself and fighting for the ability to just be yourself, that feels heroic to me,” she says.
Sierra Burgess Is a Loser arrives on Netflix September 7.
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