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Starring on Degrassi has taught me many lessons. We’re all trying to keep ourselves in check. We are our own harshest critics. Even if you feel like you did OK, when you shot a scene, you’re always going to go back and see what you could’ve done better.

You can keep improving and sometimes I find it hard for you to keep things straight because we shoot everything out of order and now we are doing 4 episodes at a time. Doing two episodes was hard enough because you find yourself at a certain point in the script and you always have to think, “Okay, what just happened, what’s coming up, and how can I make this flow properly.”

It can all be sort of stressful when you get down to it. You just have to try to make it the best that you can. But there is so much trust and comfort on set that if you are trying to improve there is room to do that and the directors are great for working with us.

I remember a scene that I had to do while I’m in bed and Melinda came in with Ally and she is apologizing. At that point, it was the weakest we have seen Holly J. She was really beaten down. She is usually putting on this whole confident attitude, but that was where it cracked for her and she was like “People really don’t like me” because she was a victim of online bullying.

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It took me a little while to get in that mindset for that scene. Any time there is such an emotional scene, it’s hard to keep doing it take after take or to match the emotion of the person you’re with. It can all be really challenging. But we’re lucky to work in such an encouraging environment.

I think that Holly J. is one of the best parts on the show because she came from such a negative place. She went from being the person you love to hate, to being someone who is a lot more mature. She’s in grade 12 now and she’s dropped a lot of that pretending to be someone else or who she thinks she should be. She’s more comfortable in her own skin and that was like a continual process that Declan helped her with.

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That relationship really softened her up. Now she has this sort of idyllic view of how things are going to go after high school. She thinks she’s going to marry Declan and they’re going to go to Yale together and it’s going to be this whole perfect world. But life isn’t perfect and that is something Degrassi definitely shows time and time again.

In the movie you’re going to see that she has a pretty great summer and she gets to pursue both her love life and her career. But coming back to Degrassi is just kind of a shock.  She’s coming back to the real world and her parents have no money. Not only is their poor financial situation is an ongoing thing, but she also thinks she’s going to get the school presidency just handed to her and obviously that is not the case because there is a dark horse in the running. Things aren’t going to work out the way you want them to ever.

Please tune in to check out this season of Degrassi, every night at 9pm ET now through August 26th, on TeenNick. 

– C