Posted in: Max, streaming, TV | Tagged: exclusive, interview, Jordan Gonzalez, Maia Reficco, Malia Pyles, max, Pretty Little Liars, pretty little liars original sin, pretty little liars: summer school

Pretty Little Liars: Pyles, Reficco, Gonzalez on Summer School & More

Pretty Little Liars stars Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco & Jordan Gonzalez on their growth from "Original Sin" to "Summer School," horror & more.

As actors, Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco & Jordan Gonzalez know that there is always room for improvement in terms of their craft – and what better way to learn than from one another on the Max thriller series Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin? While the three benefit from being in an ensemble setting like its predecessor, having a season's worth to build rapport only helped them in this latest season, Summer School, which directly follows the events of the season one finale as the group attempts to cope with their trauma knowing things are far from over. The mystery shrouding the killer still haunts them. The trio, who respectively play Minnie "Mouse" Honrada, Noa Olivar, and Ash Romero, spoke to Bleeding Cool about the challenges they faced as actors entering season two, if the original books from Sara Shepard prep them from the series adaption from spinoff creators and showrunners Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School Stars Pyles, Reficco & Gonzalez on Expanding Themselves and Their Characters

Bleeding Cool: What's been the biggest challenges for 'Pretty Little Liars' season 2?

Pyles: It's always intimidating coming back because you never know how everything plays out, and then you return to what feels like home now. It's like, "This is like riding a bike. It's so easy. It's so fun. We get to see our family again in many ways," but there are more physical challenges this season. We're all engaged a bit more physically. There's more running [laughs]. That was one of the challenges as things have come up along the way, but it's something we haven't been able to tackle.

How did you all approach your roles for the series? Did you prep by reading the books or go from what was on the page with the scripts?

Reficco: When it comes to honoring or paying homage to the original and, at the same time, prepping for these roles, it came naturally for me personally because I was already a huge fan of the original. I was a huge fan is an understatement. I absolutely love the show. I was obsessed. I already followed everybody, and I love Sara Shepard. I was completely and utterly obsessed with the show when I was younger. It was easy to brush up on my PLL knowledge. It was fresh, but it's also a huge responsibility when you come into such an iconic franchise to be respected and to try your best to fill such huge shoes. We all avidly tried to keep the genesis of this show in mind when we were tackling these characters and these stories.

Pyles: Totally.

One of the aspects of the series is how self-aware it is as horror. Was it difficult to balance the awareness and not border on parody?

Gonzalez: It's easy with Roberto and Lindsay; both are massive horror fans. Those homages are going to exist, and they should, but they're written in a way where those classics exist, and they always will be a throughline. There's also an incredible new spin that it is a different take than other things. Lindsay and Roberto make it easy through the writing. The set deck is incredible, and the design that they do is still an homage to classics but with a new twist that makes it easy for us to not make a parody out of a classic but more to pay honor and tribute to it.

What have you learned as you grow as actors transitioning between the seasons?

Reficco: As actors, at least for me, my favorite thing about season one was to learn from my peers. It was inspiring to get to see them work, see how they all approached each of their characters, how we would go to set, and how we prepped for each scene. As an actor coming into season two, we had a big gap in shooting other things in the process. It made me appreciate watching them work and learning from them so much. Coming into season two, that was the biggest gift that I found that season one had left me. That was all the little things that I unconsciously learned from this incredible cast. It was fun to find all of these new tools that I didn't realize I picked up, because of them, how wonderful they all are, and so generous with the way that they work.

Pyles: Thanks, Maia. To follow that, I'll say with season one, everything was so new to me. I remember the first time I had to scream. I was so scared of my voice. Like she said, I had to learn from my peers, hearing Bailee Madison scream repeatedly. I was like, "I can use my voice and I can invent a scream that feels authentic to me and doesn't feel like a shrill, womanly, and in a way that it isn't true to myself. There are things like the elements playing in the world, like defining a scream or finding the breath of a character. Those are fun things the genre allows us to explore. It was super fun getting to do more horror this season.

Gonzalez: Season one was a masterclass for me. It was my first big job, and I would walk around the halls and gloat about these women leading this show because I couldn't be luckier than to have landed with them and be able to sit in Video Village and watch them do their craft and learn so much from them, bringing that into season two in a sense also. Roberto and Lindsay do a great job of subverting this genre on its head, where the women are the powerful people in this show, and the guys exist in service of the women, and they're silly and, at times, dumb boys. It's fun to play that because usually, the genre has the women at the expense of men, and it's cool that our show doesn't do that. I get to be the idiot who goes and checks to see if somebody is outside and if I survive or not.

The first two episodes of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, which also stars Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Mallory Bechtel, Sharon Leal, Annabeth Gish, Elena Goode, Alex Aiono, Lea Salonga, and Elia Kacavas, are available to stream on Max with new episodes every Thursday.

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