Kristine Froseth Talks "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser" and Making Veronica a Mean Girl in the Age of Instagram
Regina George does not need an origin story. She just is, has always been, will always be — fully formed, completely terrifying, the sun around which each high school orbits. You don't really need a reason to understand why she does what she does, what drives her, the ultimate mean girl, to be so wholly evil. To borrow a point of reference from Gretchen Wieners, you do not need a primer on who Caesar was in his younger years to know that his totalitarian power over the Republic was wrong.
But Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, the new high-school movie that made its Netflix debut on September 7, would like you to consider the interior life of its own Regina George, the catty cheerleader Veronica. On paper, she is everything Mean Girls's infamous villain would be in 2018: blonde, cruel, popular on Instagram, beloved by boys who seem blind to the fact that she is so utterly terrifying to the rest of the school. Yet as the film progresses, we learn more about her and watch as her armor is slowly dismantled. Kristine Froseth, who plays Veronica, says that is to the credit of female friendship.
"I haven't read that many scripts that actually have that aspect to it," Kristine explained to Teen Vogue about what appealed to her about Sierra Burgess's depiction of the burgeoning friendship between Veronica and her former target, Sierra (Shannon Purser. To be fair, theirs is an unlikely pairing: it begins after Veronica gives a cute jock Sierra's number as a prank; the jock, Jamey (Noah Centineo, texts Sierra, thinking she's Veronica; she does not correct him, and eventually pulls Veronica into a catfishing scheme that is all but guaranteed to blow up in everyone's faces. But while Sierra ultimately gets the guy, critics and viewers alike responded more to the spark ignited between Sierra and Veronica — and Kristine says that's no accident.
The actor explains that she has read a lot of scripts where "women usually compete or compare or undermine and undercut each other." But she asserts that Sierra and Veronica have a different dynamic. "Their relationship is built off fighting off each other's insecurities," she says. "They become support systems and they realize they're not as different as they thought they were because of the social hierarchy and what people assume. They just help each other fight off their demons and it's really beautiful how they become better versions of themselves because of each other."
"A lot of younger girls have been DMing me and saying it's been lovely to see a female friendship that strong on the screen. That it's not only about getting the guy and the girl being the love interest in the story, but it's more about Sierra and Veronica," she adds.
To create that dynamic, Kristine leaned on her costar, Shannon, whom she called "the most amazing human being." A complete 180 to the horrible ways Veronica treats Sierra in the beginning of the film — among other things, she and her lackeys issue insults which viewers have rightfully called out as transphobic — Kristine says that her relationship with Shannon blossomed into a real friendship. "She was such a good support the entire time and I'm really glad we got to do this together because our chemistry is completely genuine," she adds. "The last scene we shot — when Shannon and I get together outside of prom [at the end of the movie] — that was our last day shooting, so it was sad, but beautiful."
Over the course of Sierra Burgess, Veronica unpacks a number of her burdens. Her father has been gone for a number of years; to compensate, her mother (Chrissy Metz) has morphed into an overbearing stage mother for two Toddlers in Tiaras-type tweens, who practice their routines loudly at all hours. Her ex-boyfriend, Spence, is in college and has unceremoniously dumped her. She isn't doing well in school. As a result, she lashes out — judging Jamey by his "loser" friends, and Sierra by virtue of the fact that she is Veronica's foil.
"I was really happy to just feel how human she was," Kristine says of her character. "She has so much inner conflict and struggles with her family. I just understood why she was the way she was and I really wanted to tell her story."
Kristine moved around a lot in high school, which meant that she "never really spent enough time with one group." Still, the outsider perspective meant that she was attuned to the quick judgments people can make about each other simply based on what someone said in English class one day. "I can't speak on behalf of anyone else, but in high school, I would easily judge someone based on who they were at school when they really had so much conflict or a back story that I didn't know about," she remembers. "I think that's really important that people don't just assume, that they don't judge a book by its cover."
Not that any of these issues are an excuse for why Veronica lashes out the way she does, or how she leads Jamey on with Sierra's number. (Arguably, the story would not exist without Veronica's presence as some malevolent kind of matchmaker, as even Jamey admits he wouldn't have noticed Sierra had the cheerleader not taunted him to begin with.) And a number of people have argued that the film doesn't do enough in the way of showcasing appropriate ramifications for its characters's actions; Veronica forgives Sierra for hijacking her social media, and Jamey quickly gets over the fact that Veronica and Sierra lied to him at the outset.
But Kristine holds firm to the belief that "we're not pretending that anyone in this movie is a perfect role model. I think it's important for cinema to show flawed characters and show the reality of the situation." Her cousins, she says, "talk about what it's like going to school now with Snapchat and Instagram," and how tough that is. She also points to the films themes, like "the hard choices of growing up and discovering the good and bad things about yourself" as what she hopes "people will remember most" from the movie.
Perhaps Regina George never needed a prequel, or to tell the Mean Girls story from her point of view — after all, humanizing the villain is a slippery slope, and a level of care not often afforded to other, equally as deserving characters. But dismantling her reign of terror couldn't come at a more pressing time, when cyberbullying is everywhere we see.
"It's a shame how easy it is now," Kristine posits. "You're anonymous and people get so much more courage to say nastier things because they'll never be caught. It's truly heartbreaking that there's so much hate. It's hard to just tell someone to just do their best and shut it out because it will obviously hurt you, it hurts me when it happens to me. You just have to realize, or try your best to understand where it's coming from. With Veronica, it's all her own insecurities that she's putting out on others. I think if you understand a bit more where it's coming from it will help lessen the blow."
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Shannon Purser Addressed the Catfishing Controversy Around Sierra Burgess Is a Loser
