Image Source: The Pitch

The Fallout star Maddie Ziegler recently talked with Entertainment Weekly and shared what it was like to star in her debut role. 

Fallout is Megan Park's maiden adventure as a director and a writer where she has cast Ziegler and Jenna Ortega as Mia and Vada. The film shows the journeys of the two characters as they come together in a bathroom stall during a school shooting incident. Though the two students were not the best of friends, the bathroom experience made them form a bond as they went on to live their lives, coping with the impact of the shooting incident. 

Revealing how she got turned into this world of acting, Maddie Ziegler shared that when she was young, her only focus was dancing. “When I was younger, I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, dance til I die. That’s it. That’s my path forever.’ For some reason, that was all I could think of until I started doing music videos with Sia," she said.

But as she shot those videos, comprehension dawned on her. "I kind of realized, ‘Oh, I’m literally playing a character in all these music videos, and I’m becoming these different roles,’ and a huge part of the rehearsal process was not just the movement, but the actual intention behind the emotions," she revealed.

Getting into that opened her into the world of playing characters,  a step different from what she had first thought of when she was younger. Once she realized it was something she would enjoy doing, Ziegler thought of expanding her expertise into the acting industry. 

"And then I was like, ‘Okay, yeah. This is definitely something I want to do,’ so I started auditioning and started getting little roles here and there, and then one day it kind of just happened where it consumed me, and I was like, ‘I want to be an actor just as much as I want to be a dancer,’” she admitted.

The first time she auditioned for Mia, Park helped her in the process and made sure that Ziegler had all it needed to secure that role. “I got the audition, and I read the script and immediately fell in love with it, and was just so connected to it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this movie," she said. 

Megan gave Maddie Ziegler a call before she came in for the audition so that she was at ease when she would finally step into the role. "And then before I went in for my audition, my team was like, ‘Oh yeah, Megan wants to call you just to have a conversation and make you feel comfortable before you come in,’ which is rare. People don’t have to do that. That’s really nice."

The project, being the first to be directed by Megan Park, was truly close to her heart, and she was very conscious of making everything the very best. Ziegler said, "This is Megan’s baby. This is the first movie that she’s written and directed, so she’s taken such an amazing approach with it." 

Once the two had their talk, Ziegler was confident in herself when she auditioned. "And so we talked, and she was just kind of giving references and... and just making it really fun and exciting, and then I went in and did my audition, and I kind of left being like, ‘Oh my gosh, this really could be it.’ I felt really good about it," she revealed. 

Even though she secured the role, playing in the movie was not an easy task. The audition was just the tip of the iceberg. Ziegler had to put in a lot of effort and work each day to stay consistent with the quality of her work and yet not let herself demean her work for not being perfect. 

“It was very heavy and every day, walking into set, I really had to just not let myself freak out, not let my perfectionist get in the way, and just really dive into this role and trust my partner, which was Jenna, and trust Megan," she shared. "I very, very, very much am so glad that we had a safe environment to be in. Megan made it comfortable."

She shared that Megan would regularly make sure that the actresses were feeling fine and ask, ‘You guys cool? You feel okay?’" "So many conversations leading up to it that made us feel safe enough to go there with our performances," she divulged. "And of course, I was nervous. I was so nervous just because this subject matter is so important and needs to be talked about and needs to be portrayed in movies, and I just wanted to bring Megan’s vision to life because it’s so important.”

The actress then shared what it was like to perform with her castmate. “She’s perfect. I love her!" said Ziegler, talking about her Fallout costar, Jenna Ortega. "I would say when we were doing the bathroom stall scene, which was the heaviest scene we had to do and was literally the last scene before I wrapped, which I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we ended on the heaviest scene.’"

However, the two being together made it a bit easier for both of the actresses. "Just seeing the way she gradually got to the point of having a breakdown — we were this close to each other. I was watching her, and I was in shock. I couldn’t even comprehend how amazing she was and how she went there. She really went there so intensely, and I was just in awe."

The actress revealed that she will use that performance as a benchmark for her future auditions. "And I very much have tried to kind of keep that in mind when having to audition for different things or film different things, I’m just like, ‘I have to just let everything fly and go there as Jenna did,’ because it was pretty special.”

The film was released on January 27, 2022.