Who Plays Anika In ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3? Meet Sofia Bryant

The Summer I Turned Pretty is finally back for its highly-anticipated third and final season, and with a new summer comes a new batch of characters and cast members.

TSITP Season 3 finds Belly (Lola Tung) at the end of her junior year of college, and since she, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), Conrad (Christopher Briney), Taylor (Rain Spencer), and Steven (Sean Kaufman) have spent years away at school since we last saw them in Season 2’s finale, they’ve naturally made new friends.

In addition to lots of fan-favorite returning stars, The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 welcomes new series regulars Isabella Briggs and Kristen Connolly, along with several recurring cast members, including Lily Donoghue, Zoé de Grand’Maison, Emma Ishta, Tanner Zagarino, and Sofia Bryant, who plays an iconic new character named Anika.

Who is Anika on The Summer I Turned Pretty? And what do we know about Sofia Bryant, the actor who plays Anika? Here’s what to know about the new gal pal in Belly’s life, based on the Prime Video series and Jenny Han’s third book: We’ll Always Have Summer.

Who Is Anika On The Summer I Turned Pretty?

Ahead of The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Season 3 premiere, Tung and Spencer helped introduce Anika and Sofia Bryant in an Instagram post. Bryant explained that her character Anika is “a really loyal friend” to Belly at college.”She’s a little bit silly and a little bit goofy — and she’s a dancer! Bonus!”

Though Taylor isn’t the biggest fan of sharing Belly, Bryant aexplained that Anika “loves her girls” and said she and Taylor “grow into their friendship throughout the season, which is really nice to see.” When asked if she’s Team Belly, Team Jeremiah, or Team Conrad, Bryant meant well, but gave a response that’s sure to be controversial to readers: “She’s Team Belly.”

While we do get to several scenes between Anika, Belly, and Taylor in Season 3’s two-episode premiere, for fans of the Prime Video series who haven’t read We’ll Always Have Summer and want to know more about Belly’s new college pal, here’s an Anika excerpt from the book:

“Anika was my closest friend at school besides Taylor. Seeing as how Taylor was competitive by nature, it was a friendship that she was more than a little jealous of, not that she’d ever admit it. My friendship with Anika was different from my friendship with Taylor. Anika was laid-back and easy to be with. She wasn’t quick to judge. More than all that, though, she gave me the space to be different. She hadn’t known me my whole life, so she had no expectations or preconceptions. There was freedom in that. And she wasn’t like any of my friends back home. She was from New York, and her father was a jazz musician and her mother was a writer.”

Who Is Sofia Bryant? Meet The Actor Who Plays Anika On The Summer I Turned Pretty

Anika on The Summer I Turned Pretty is played by Sofia Bryant, a 25-year-old American-Finnish actor who had 15 IMDb credits prior to her role in the Prime Video series. Since 2015, she’s starred in TV series and movies including The Good Wife, Blue Bloods, I Am Not Okay with This, The Girl in the Woods, Little Dixie, Found, Hungry, and more.

While we wait to see more of Bryant as Anika, you can also stay up-to-date with her on Instagram at @sofiabryantofficial, where she had 254,000 followers ahead of The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Season 3 premiere.

New episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.