Kaitlyn Dever Is Ready for Her Moment in the Sun

When Kaitlyn Dever strolled into the Manhattan restaurant on an overcast September afternoon, she looked like the physical manifestation of sunshine. Literally: The 22-year-old actor was dressed in head-to-toe marigold, a look she credited to her stylist, Karla Welch. Turns out the outfit is part of a recent style renaissance that included a closet clean out ending in eight bags of clothes.

“I was realizing how many style phases I’ve gone through, and some of them are…interesting,” says Dever, ticking them off on her fingers. “Crocheted tops—I was doing a lot of ‘boho’ shopping. The floppy hats look, I wore that one a lot.” There was even a brief flirtation with going goth that coincided with a crush on Chris Angel.

Were you into magic? I wondered. “No, I like tattoos,” Dever deadpans, arching an eyebrow. “I know, very edgy. I was 14; it was a formative year. Kind of gives you a glimpse into my taste.” She’s since moved on from Chris Angel—these days, she says she’s dying to work with Jeff Goldblum—but the search for a signature style continues. “I feel like I’m constantly becoming other people, and then I’m dressing like the character I play," she says. "That’s why I feel so scatterbrained in my style.”

When it comes to her career, however, Dever knows exactly what she wants: She’s been acting since she was nine—early roles include "Adorable Girl" in the Make It or Break It series and a part in An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong. Nearly a decade of recurring roles on series like Justified and Last Man Standing followed. This year, Dever officially went from rising star to supernova with a breakout role in Olivia Wilde's Booksmart alongside Beanie Feldstein. The movie, about two BFFs who strive to have one wild night before high school ends, was called "one of the best teen comedies to come along in years" by The A.V. Club and has an impressive 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Dever and Feldstein's Amy and Molly have become the heirs apparent to Lucy and Ethel or, more recent, Abbi and Ilana—in other words, a comedy duo that proves once and for all the buddy genre isn't just for the boys.

Now people are buzzing about Dever's performance in Unbelievable. The Netflix series is based on a jaw-dropping, real-life ProPublica investigation and has become a tentpole of the fall TV lineup. In it, Dever plays Marie, a teenager who is raped at knifepoint, reports the incident to police, and then recants her story after detectives pressure her into confessing that she made it all up for attention.

“The reaction I had to reading that script...it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. My heart just broke,” says Dever. She says the experience exposed her to what many survivors experience during a sexual assault investigation—and the trauma of that intense process. She didn’t fully appreciate how emotionally demanding the part would be until arriving on set.

Once there, though, she felt herself going into caretaker mode. “I feel the need to care for and nurture the people I’m doing a scene with," she explains. "I’ll stay as long as they want or be off camera as long as they want. I think it comes from being an older sister and putting other people’s feelings before your own.” When I dub that impulse "Big Sister Energy," Dever nods in agreement.

She does, in fact, have two younger sisters, the recipients of her closet clean out. Dever and her middle sister, Mady, are in a band together—Beulahbelle, a dreamy mix of harmonized melodies and acoustic guitar—but she's fiercely tight with and protective of them both. Part of that has to do with family history: When their mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer 10 years ago, Dever, then 12, felt as if she needed to be a pillar.

“It has totally shaped me and my sisters, and it goes straight back to that nurturing energy I have with them," she says. "When you’re dealing with that as a family, it 100% puts things into perspective and allows you to look at life differently. That’s why I’m so good at bad days at work. Because I know, in the back of my mind: This is not really that bad.”

She applied that lens during some of the more challenging moments on the Unbelievable set. Some days, she says, she would drive home from set with a massive headache caused by crying so much during her scenes. “I would think: the discomfort I feel now, it’s nothing in comparison to what Marie went through,” she says. Dever believes the series will help viewers develop more insight into the process of coming forward and have more empathy for survivors. “Some people have the opportunity to find the courage [to come forward] and some don’t," she explains. "At the end of the day, I hope everyone finds a little bit of hope in the show.”

As for where we’ll see Dever next: There’s a project on the horizon, but she flashes a slightly mischievous grin as she tells me that she can't talk about it...yet. She also just wrapped an episode of Platform, a new FX anthology series from B.J. Novak, and she’s writing songs for Beulahbelle.

Mainly, she’s trying to enjoy this moment in the sun. “It feels like I’m in a bit of a groove, like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing right now,” Dever says. Soon after, she takes that sunshine ensemble out into what had become a marvelously cloudless day.

Elizabeth Kiefer is a New York City–based writer and editor.

Originally Appeared on Glamour