The Essentials With Abigail Cowen: Florida Beaches, Reality TV and ‘Every Year After’
When Abigail Cowen was auditioning for the role of Delilah Mason in the onscreen adaptation of Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel, Every Summer After, she didn’t actually know what she was auditioning for. “They had the show under a code name, and it wasn’t until we went in for the last read with all of the producers and execs that I found out,” Cowen tells Observer of landing the part in the recently released series, Every Year After. The Florida-born actress immediately picked up the book following that final audition, and would continue to return to Fortune’s debut novel during the next four months of filming in Vancouver. That foundation helped Cowen with capturing Delilah, whose role as protagonist Percy Fraser’s childhood best friend is greatly expanded in the series, both in her younger flashbacks as well as her present-day life in Barry’s Bay.
“You can think about your character all day long, but once you really step into the costumes and step on set, it just kind of comes,” says Cowen, who also spent time talking ideas out with the showrunner, Amy B. Harris. “I wanted to figure out how to make Delilah layered because we go deeper into her story in the series, and we also go back in the time of when she was young and see what made her the way she is now,” she adds. Cowen, who plays Delilah onscreen from her late teen years to the age of 28 in the first season of Every Year After, is set to reprise her role in the series’ recently announced second season, based on Fortune’s book One Golden Summer, as well. “I feel like it doesn’t happen very often where you get to dive into who the character was when they were young, and that really helped to discover new things about her.”
Having previously worked on book-to-screen adaptations across film and television (including the 2018 comic book-based series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Cowen is no stranger to the pressure of living up to fans’ expectations. But aside from some extra jitters before filming and again before the premiere, it’s a challenge she thoroughly enjoys. “There is a responsibility to this already built-in fanbase, and you want to do it justice for everyone,” Cowen says, admitting she always gets nervous about what the fans will think. “But at the end of the day, everyone’s version of a character in a book is different,” she explains. “You envision the person differently, you envision the story differently, so the cool thing is that there is still creative liberty as an actor; it’s through your eyes now, too.”
After a whirlwind week of press for Every Year After’s official release on Amazon Prime (and before heading off to begin filming for her next project, The Guide), Observer caught up with Abigail Cowen to chat about her current essentials—from the moisturizer that doesn’t irritate her sensitive skin to her dinner order while filming the show in Vancouver.
