The public fascination with Kaufman’s romantic life originated with the debut season of The Summer I Turned Pretty in 2022. While Belly Conklin’s love triangle with Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher drove the central narrative, Steven Conklin’s courtship of Shayla Wang, portrayed by Minnie Mills, quickly evolved into a breakout favorite. Viewers praised the dynamic for its balance of lighthearted charm and emotional maturity, quickly dubbing the couple "Stayla."
That on-screen connection spilled over into real life when fans noticed their natural chemistry during promotional junkets and press tours. Joint TikTok videos, affectionate red-carpet appearances, and mutual praise during interviews created a familiar pop-culture feedback loop. Viewers who wanted Steven and Shayla to endure began projecting those desires onto Kaufman and Mills directly. When Shayla’s character did not return for the second season due to narrative divergences from Jenny Han’s original book trilogy, fans clung even tighter to off-screen sightings of the two actors together in New York.
The boundary between fictional storytelling and real-world actor dynamics frequently blurs in young-adult television fandoms. Viewers become deeply invested in on-screen relationships, and social media algorithms amplify fleeting red-carpet hugs into supposed relationship confirmations. In Kaufman and Mills' case, their evident comfort around each other provided endless raw footage for fan edits, cementing the rumor mill long after their characters parted ways on screen.
