Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, the two stars of “The Sun Is Also a Star,” shine bright on the cover of Cosmopolitan’s May 2019 issue. “The Sun Is Also a Star” is based on number-one New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s YA novel of the same name, and is directed by celebrated female director Ry Russo-Young. It follows high-school-senior Natasha and her family on the day of their impending deportation from New York to Jamaica. On the same day, Natasha must leave the country she calls home for a new home she barely remembers. Natasha meets and falls in love with Daniel, the youngest son of Korean immigrants. It focuses on teenagers of color and the main conflict centers around immigration and deportation, a relevant and important issue to see onscreen.
Yara Shahidi, 19, (Black-ishand Grown-ish star) is a role model for passionate young women today. When she is not studying at Harvard or starring in Grown-ish, she is a political activist and founder of her own voter-outreach program, Eighteen x 18. As Allie Jones writes in the Cosmopolitan interview, Shahidi’s clear, eloquent, diction and precise way of speaking about her goals and her ideas would place her equally at home in LA and DC.
Charles Melton, 28, is a well-known TV heartthrob, for his role as Reggie on the smash hit Riverdale. Melton aims to grace our television and movie screens for the long run, discussing Will Smith with clear fervor and energy (he is currently filming Bad Boys for Life with Smith). He’s developing ways to deal with his “increasingly obsessive fandom,” as Jones writes.
The beauty of “The Sun is also a Star” is that it shows how Natasha and Daniel are shaped by their culture and their backgrounds, Korean and American, Jamaican and American, and also by the universality of their age, as teenagers falling in love over karaoke and shared interests.
If you haven’t read “The Sun is Also a Star,” read it now so you’ll be super psyched to see the movie when it comes out on May 17th!