The 22-year-old actress discusses power, corruption, working with Zac Efron, and professes her love for the 1980s. 

For most people, a trip to the grocery store is uneventful. They walk in, they grab what they need, they pay and then leave, but that wasn&#39;t the case for 22-year-old Grace Victoria Cox&nbsp;on one particular shopping day.

As Cox was pushing her cart around the aisles of her local supermarket, she received a phone call with news that she had booked the role of Veronica Sawyer for an upcoming TV show called Heathers, a loose retelling of the &#39;80s cult classic film (Winona Ryder first played Veronica Swayer in the film back in 1988). &quot;I abandoned my cart and started pacing the aisles calling my family,&quot; she tells me over the phone. &quot;I couldn&rsquo;t believe it&mdash;I was immediately nervous because I [knew] it was such an iconic role to take on.&quot; Iconic, indeed.&nbsp;

Experiencing nerves is to be expected,&nbsp;especially when you&#39;ve been given a role previously played by Winona freakin&#39; Ryder. But while the two characters might share the&nbsp;same name, Cox assures me that the story her Veronica plans to tell&nbsp;differs from that of her &#39;80s counterpart. So while the decade may be back as a far as fashion trends are concerned, Paramount Network&#39;s version of Heathers plans to tell a story that&#39;s remixed and repackaged for the Instagram era. But I digress.&nbsp;

Cox first moved to Los Angeles back in 2012 at only 17 years old. Her supporting role as Melanie Cross on CBS&#39;s Under the Dome&nbsp;would eventually prepare her for her future auditions (and no doubt is representative of her&nbsp;incredible range as an actress). A lot has happened since then. Filming for Heathers has gone underway (the first episode premieres&nbsp;March 7) and she&#39;s even secured a role in Joe Berlinger&#39;s forthcoming thriller&nbsp;Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring Zac Efron as notorious &#39;70s serial killer Ted Bundy. Not too bad for a former farm girl from Kentucky.&nbsp;

Ahead, the budding ing&eacute;nue catches up with L&#39;Officiel USA about working on Heathers, society&#39;s obsession with nostalgia, and what catches her eye when it comes to choosing a role.&nbsp;

Dress and T-shirt Miu Miu, Choker Dior

When did you first see Heathers?&nbsp; 
I first saw it when I was 11 and it really, really scared me. I think I was just too young to [understand] it. Then I watched it again when I found out I was auditioning for the show and loved it&mdash;it immediately made me want to be a part of the show so bad.&nbsp;

It&#39;s such a great story, the metaphors. I think it&#39;s very universal. It applies no matter what the decade is. It&rsquo;s all about power and how power corrupts. I think people are endlessly fascinated by that and that&#39;s why the theme of that is always so relevant.

You can definitely see that. The cast seems to have great chemistry with each other. Shanon Doherty&#39;s part of the project too, right? 
Yeah, she is! She is so nice and cool. We&#39;re so lucky to have the blessing of a person who was part of the original cast being involved. She was very graceful and understanding, just a good example on-set and incredibly kind.&nbsp;

What was your favorite part of working on Heathers?&nbsp; 
That I [got] to work with the nicest, best group of people ever. They&#39;re all so wonderful.

What would you say the show&rsquo;s message is?&nbsp; 
Well, social media is a big part of the show [which] makes [it] really different from the movie just because that didn&#39;t exist [then], you know? I think it really is about power and how power corrupts people. That can be explored in a totally new way now that we do have social media. Society is different now than it was when the original movie came out. So it&#39;s a cool time to explore this idea again.&nbsp;

Anyone can be a Heather. Anyone can be powerful and anyone can be corrupted by that. So Heathers is really a fun, exciting exploration of that. At the end of the day, we&rsquo;re just [trying] to create a cool show that people will like and that will make them think, depending on how [they] interpret it.&nbsp;

You work&nbsp;with Zac Efron on Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. A lot of people first saw him in High School Musical. Did you grow up watching him on that?&nbsp; 
[Laughs] Yeah! Yeah, I did! I loved High School Musical growing up. I knew every word to every song, I watched all of them. I even went to a theater to see the one that wasn&#39;t [a] Disney Channel Original, so I was really excited to get to work with him. He was incredibly kind and so professional. I think that people will think that his work in the movie is amazing.&nbsp;

A lot of your projects take place in past eras, what do you think makes nostalgia so appealing to audiences in 2018?&nbsp; 
People are so hungry for that right now. I think there&#39;s just something so cool about looking back on the past and what it was like, especially [in] the &#39;80s. I wasn&#39;t alive then, but my mom says all the time, &quot;That was the coolest time to get to grow up.&quot; I think that speaks to the success of shows like Stranger Things. People are just hungry for that. It&#39;s just cool; a cool time, you know?&nbsp;

If there was one era you wish you could have lived during which would it be?&nbsp; 
Definitely the &#39;80s. The style, the music. &#39;80s music&mdash;that&#39;s all I listen to.&nbsp;

Who&rsquo;s your favorite artist of the &lsquo;80s?&nbsp; 
I&#39;m obsessed with Prince. I love Prince.

As an actress, what makes a script jump out at you?&nbsp; 
There are some scripts that when you read them, you can&#39;t stop turning the page. I think that says a lot. Books and novels are made to be page turners, but [with] scripts, you can&#39;t [really] tell when there&#39;s no visual yet, that&#39;s usually something that really catches my attention. I think it says a lot whenever a story that&#39;s meant to be told in a visual way pulls you in when it&#39;s just text.&nbsp;

What can the public expect from your upcoming show and films? 
I&#39;ve never seen anything else like [them]&mdash;they&rsquo;re in for a wild ride.

Heathers premieres on Paramount Network on March 7, 2018.

Heathers Official Trailer

Ten Minutes with Grace Victoria Cox

Ten Minutes with Grace Victoria Cox

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