Shannon Purser Is Having a Really Great Summer

From ELLE

A year after her first ever screen role, in 'Stranger Things', Shannon Purser is landing new projects (like 'Riverdale' and this weekend's 'Wish Upon') and basking in a surprise Emmy nomination. Finally-#JusticeForBarb.

We're coming down the boardwalk on Venice Beach when the voices of three teen girls rise above the cacophonous, warring sound systems of hotdog and SoCal kitsch vendors. The girls have veered off onto the sand for a frantic huddle, dressed like Gen Z updates on Penny Lane. They're young and look undeniably cool, but they've momentarily thrown every last shred of chill to the wind. "It's her!" one of them says, barely softer than a stage whisper, pointing down the path to Shannon Purser.

This isn't the first or last time today that passersby recognize Purser during our beachside shoot. Grown dudes will rubberneck as the 20-year-old passes; a woman elbows her boyfriend between the ribs and side-mouths, "Riverdale!" A year ago, you wouldn't have recognized Purser unless you were a regular at the movie theater where she worked in her hometown of Roswell, Georgia. Then came her first screen credit, Stranger Things. The Netflix phenom from Matt and Ross Duffer was an impeccable 1980s sci-fi pastiche that paid homage to the spooky, goofy likes of Poltergeist, The Goonies, and E.T., lovingly updated for the binge-watch era; its cast boasted Winona Ryder, back at her peak, and a wildly charming group of kid actors.

When Purser auditioned for Stranger Things, it still had its original name, Montauk, and the production was looking for local hires in the Atlanta area, where the show would be shot. Purser's best friend came over with a camera and helped her film an audition tape in the basement. She read for "this girl named Barb," who would be dishing about a guy named Steve to her friend Nancy by their high school lockers. The second tape she was asked to send in was of a scene in which Barb is screaming and trying to claw her way out of a swimming pool.

Then Purser was asked to fly to L.A. and audition for the Duffer Brothers. The night she found out she'd landed the part, she and her mother were back at the theater where she'd worked, watching a movie. "I can't for the life of me remember what movie we were seeing," she says. "But it was just me and her in the theater. I was obsessively checking my phone, and then I got an email telling me I got the part. I turned to my mom, like, 'Mom, I got it!' Then we watched the rest of the movie."

Barbara Holland is only in a couple of scenes, which last a matter of minutes. But there was something about her that landed hard with Stranger Things viewers. Dressed in mom jeans and high-collared, ruffled tops, all capped with a signature pair of oversized grandma glasses, she reminded every '80s child with a Netflix account of their awkward adolescence. The Internet emphatically declared: We are all Barb. We've all wrung clammy, jittery hands over the four-year popularity contest that is high school. Like Barb, who uses free rides in her sweet VW as a subconscious bargaining chip in her friendship with Nancy, we've all felt the need to hustle to be liked. We've all wondered if anyone would even care if we, like, totally just disappeared one day. When Barb gets dragged into the nether dimension of the Upside Down? Many of her friends and family seem to treat her vanishing act with a shrug-and hoo boy, that hit close to home. We might have spent our lives trying to be Claire Standish, Kelly Taylor, or Blair Waldorf. But Barb was much closer to the mark.

"The show came out, and there was a little lull before everybody caught on," Purser recalls. "Then maybe a month later, I check Twitter. I'm getting all these new followers-people are hashtagging me and putting my face on Harambe. I was like, What is happening?" There were more memes. There were parody and tribute videos, and parody tribute videos; fan art and thinkpieces. (Purser's Twitter banner is a doodle of Barb saying, "None of my friends care that I'm dead. But at least the Internet likes me.") Then Barb emerged triumphant from a swimming pool, surrounded by Esther Williams-esque synchronized swimmers, during a choreographed cameo in Jimmy Fallon's Golden Globes opener.

It wasn't just the Internet that took a shine to Purser. "I got to meet Emma Stone at the SAG Awards very briefly," says Purser. "I said, 'Hi, you probably don't know who I am, but...' And she was like, 'Barb!'" An avid RuPaul's Drag Race fan, Purser approached RuPaul and show judge Michelle Visage at the MTV Movie Awards. "I thought, 'I'm going to kick myself if I don't say something.'" Instead, when she came up to them, Visage announced, "Barb! We were rooting for you!"

So were entertainment reporters, who dogged the Duffer Brothers with questions about Barb's ultimate fate, as if the sight of her slimed-over corpse wasn't the period at the end of the sentence. "I actually feel bad for them," says Purser, sheepishly. "My character was probably not supposed to be important at all, and now whenever they give interviews, people keep asking, 'So what's the story with Barb?' They must be like, 'She's dead! We killed her! What more do you want?'"

But Shawn Levy, one of the executive producers of Stranger Things, vouches for the showrunners' affection for Purser. "Everyone just relates to Barb in surprising ways," he says. "On a personal level, we also loved directing [Purser] because she was so grateful, so excited, and so down for whatever." As for the pressing question about whether we'll ever see #JusticeForBarb? "When we realized the extent of her impact in the zeitgeist," says Levy, "we knew we needed to do right by that in keeping her memory alive in season two." (Don't get too excited-he said her memory, not her.) For her part, Purser is still amazed-and befuddled-by Barb's popularity. "It's crazy to think about what can come from such a short amount of screen time," she says, laughing. "I'm so thankful, but I don't get it!"

After the debut of Stranger Things, Purser flew to L.A. for meetings with execs and casting agents. When she met with CW casting director David Rapaport, he told her that the writers of Riverdale, the teen soap about Archie characters by way of Twin Peaks, wanted to meet her. "So I walk into a room," recalls Purser, "And they're all clapping and cheering, 'Barb! Barb! Barb!'"

"Literally every single person in the Riverdale writers' room had seen Stranger Things and become big fans of Shannon," says executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. "Barb looked like no other character on TV, by which I mean she looked real. If I look at my old high school photos, I look like Barb. I have those glasses, I have those corduroys." Writers, he says, "always gravitate towards those kinds of characters. You know, misfits. Characters who may have little screen time, but suggest a deeper, complicated inner life."

The Riverdale writers were in the middle of crafting an episode introducing Archie character Ethel Muggs, and they promptly called Rapaport, asking her to cast Purser in the role. Ethel, not unlike Barb, is a somewhat dowdily dressed side player in the drama of her high school. While the main cast commit to the melodrama like graduates from the Heather Locklear School of Acting (no shade-there's no better place to get your M.F.A. in Nighttime Soap), Purser plays Ethel like a teen trying to catch up to her peers, who've all mastered how to act like adults. In her scenes, says Aguirre-Sacasa, the show's directors will let the camera linger on Purser. "She's so natural and real that the camera picks it up," he says. "There's an authenticity there that's really empathetic." (It's that same authenticity that landed her a role in NBC's Rise, a drama about an acclaimed real-life high school theater program, this fall. Her role, though, of the self-assured Annabelle, is very un-Barb.)

A few weeks after our shoot, on a layover in Salt Lake City International Airport-she's traveling to film a second-season episode of Riverdale-she finds out she's landed an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for Stranger Things. First come calls from her manager and publicist, then a flood of texts. By the time I reach her on the phone, Twitter is losing its goddamn mind.

Purser is still processing. She had some help: first, from a pair of service dogs, golden retrievers she spotted at the gate in Salt Lake City. "I freaked out. I was just standing there, shaking," says Purser. "And there were these two dogs, right there. I said, 'Can I please pet them?' The woman was like, 'That's why they're here!' It was absolutely what I needed." The second source of calm was her mother, who, says Purser, "was for some reason super confident all along. I said, 'Mom, I really don't think I'm getting nominated for anything. There are so many amazing actors up for this.' But she was like, 'Okay, we'll see.'"

When your career was made on the Internet, you learn to speak the language of the internet. Purser retweets fan art, engages in online conversations with followers, and solicits recommendations for horror movies. (Purser stars in one opening this weekend, Wish Upon, an opportunity she jumped at after developing a taste for the genre. "I remember watching Scream at my friend's house in the third grade," she says. "I definitely wasn't allowed to, and I loved it.") And, like a lot of other vocal young stars, she's using her platform for something more. Earlier this year, an interaction with fans led Purser to come out as bisexual. Then she began tweeting more readily about body image and mental illness awareness. "It's very important to me to speak out about issues I care about, whether it's mental health or body positivity. I spent a lot of my younger days feeling very alone and isolated. If there's anything I can do to help others not feel that way, then that's what I want to do."

When we photograph Purser out in the Venice crowds, she shows no reticence and never shies away from taking photos with strangers. In her nascent career, she's somehow managed to draw confidence from both Hollywood and social media, two communities not particularly known for their hospitable, self-esteem-buoying natures. "I used to be very introverted, and maybe I still am at my core, but I've definitely grown more confident," says Purser of life post-Barb. "I get to do what I love, and I've realized that maybe I am good enough to be out here, that maybe I have a future in this industry."

Those three teenage girls pass us again on the boardwalk, a few hours after they first spotted Purser. Now she's wearing her last outfit of the day, a pair of denim overalls and a white tee, with black-and-white faux fur draped over the top. She's holding a cone of soft serve, and the girls find their in. "Where did you get that?" one of them asks casually, pointing to the ice cream. We gesture back, thataway. They wait a beat. "We love you! You look so beautiful!" Then they dart off. Purser beams happily, gives a coy shrug, and goes back to her cone. Barb is never leaving the Upside Down, we know that. But for Shannon Purser, everything is looking up.

Photography by Shelby Goldstein ▫ Hair & Makeup by Blondie for Exclusive Artists using CHANEL Ultrawear ▫ Styling by Gabriel Langenbrunner

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