Kristine Froseth is Living Her Fangirl Dreams

Photography by Lauren Dukoff

Styling by Jennifer Eymère

Her tiny frame snuggled in an oversize, vintage Mickey and Minnie Mouse T-shirt—a coveted present from co-star Charlie Plummer—Kristine Froseth, as talented as she is beautiful, lets out a long, satisfied sigh. The Norwegian-American actress, who famously played high school mean girl/cheerleader Veronica in Sierra Burgess is a Loser, will soon be streaming across screens all year. She’s in Blumhouse’s horror-fest Prey with Logan Miller, the dark thriller Low Tide, and the Hulu series Looking for Alaska. “I’ve gotten to do so many great projects and they’ve all been really different,” Froseth reflects. “I’ve been really lucky.”

Froseth feels especially lucky about Looking for Alaska, based on John Green’s wildly popular first novel, in which she plays the title character. Froseth first read the book, which caused controversy when it was published in 2005 due to profanity and explicit sex scenes, in high school. She’s since read it six times. The journey to turn the book into a series took 13 years to happen. “It’s just such a special story to me, Froseth explains. "I wanted it with all my heart. It has obviously been a dream project.”

The character of Alaska, who is reckless and enigmatic, is still a “mystery” to Froseth. “I still feel like I don’t fully understand her, which is her whole thing," she says. "She’s very much a loud personality and has this confidence I don’t have externally.” To get into the role, the actress clocked lots of rehearsal time with the director. “We did weird exercises to get me out of my comfort zone," she explains. "I really connect with her internally, so it was more on the outside.”

Froseth is also a big fan of her co-star, Charlie Plummer. “He’s such an amazing, kind, genuine human being,” she enthuses, her cheeks slightly blushing. “I’m just absorbing what he does and trying to catch up.”

Froseth shot Prey, in which a group of friends is terrorized by a sinister force on a remote island retreat, on Langkawi Island in Malaysia. She says she can’t ever make it through horror films: “I could barely watch Get Out and Us. Those were really hard to watch but they’re so good, so I had to. If I can watch during the daytime it helps.” She mentions that Prey isn’t really a bloody slasher film, despite a high body count. “It isn’t pure horror. It’s about these four teenagers who rob houses during the summer and they come upon this treasure,” she explains. “Then it’s all about how it breaks apart the friendship and the true human nature within each character. It’s a fascinating plot.”

Froseth hardly had an average upbringing, living between suburban New Jersey and a small town in Norway. The two places were vastly different. “I grew up kind of outside of Oslo with a lot of nature, and that’s something I really wish I appreciated more as a kid,” she says. “But now looking back, I realize how freeing that was and the kids are really independent. The suburbs in New Jersey were more like helicopter parents and people who are more controlling, so I think in that sense it was good to have a bit of a balance between the two. But they’re so different. I don’t even know how to compare them.”

Froseth started her career in modeling, having been scouted at a catwalk audition in a mall by IMG Models and eventually working for Prada, Miu Miu, and H&M. This experience trained her to be comfortable on set. “It’s interesting because when you’re a model, you have to be so aware of the camera in a different way than you have to be when you’re acting,” she explains, adding: “It definitely helped me realize what it’s like to be on set, the discipline that has to go into it.” But despite wearing high fashion in shoots and on red carpets, Froseth claims she isn’t a fashion fanatic. She lives in Brooklyn and prefers thrift stores to Madison Avenue. “I'm really bad at it,” she says of getting dressed up. “I don’t get out too much to shop. I kind of just wear comfy clothes.”