Page 102 - Flaunt 170 - The Phoenix Issue - Kiernan Shipka

SOPHIA LILLIS Written by Bree Castillo Photographed by Ricky Alvarez Styled by Natalie Saidi maybe the concept of time is a trivial way for humans to grasp at tangible powers they were never meant to have. Instead, Sophia Lillis doesn’t measure life with something as insignificant as time, but rather with the many versions of herself that she outgrows (or wraps on set). After graduating from the “Loser’s Club” in the two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic novel It, the 18-year-old Brooklyn-based actor has created quite a curriculum vitae of young and evolving charac- ters as she leads the expedition in capturing the modern era’s coming of age rituals and rites of passage in film. Her latest project is the fervent protagonist and super- power-wielding, Sydney, in Jonathan Entwistle’s I Am Not Okay With This, based off Charles Forsman’s graphic novel of the same name. Like it’s predecessor, The End of the F***ing World, the eight-episode narrative is fuelled by nostalgia and the compelling silence between sentences. The rhythm of director Entwistle’s vision encapsulates the inescapable mishaps that plague the teenage experience, while balancing the intimacies of friendship and the intricacies of wanting more. Paralleling her fictional counterparts, Lillis finds a way to harness the angst of being young, transcending it to something tangibly powerful. Quickly wisped into stardom after starring in 2017’s most anticipated film, the young actor’s life has been a fragmented cycle of attending school, shooting her latest project, and press, trading a traditional high school experience for an immersive class on empathy and perspective. “It’s kind of freeing in a way,” Lillis shares. “Even though I’m not at high school every- day, I am still looking for a future and already have a taste of what I’m going to do once I’m out of school.” Finding herself playing mostly literary-based characters, Lillis views being on set and working with directors and writers as her alternative high school experience. “Sure, I’m learning how to act just to begin with, but I am also learning about different people and how they react to things. It’s really interesting to become this character that you’re not alike at all and is in a totally different situation as you.” Perched at the edge of her own adolescence, Lillis serves as the perfect vehicle to the agonizing growing pains that we know all too well. “I do a lot of coming of age projects because I am going through that as well,” she states. “I’m still growing up and I’m still figuring out what I’m going to do with my life besides acting.” With her performance as the off-beat teenager, comes her ode to the space in between being young and what comes after. The thing with growing up is that we expect things will become easier as time goes on, but her roles are evidence that with time comes insecurity and heart- ache. She says, “I’ve been in situations where I feel like no matter what I do, things constantly get worse. The main thing that I really need to do is probably just calm down.” As Sydney and her friends go through the turmoil and tribulations of high school, they harmonize into a compi- lation of what it means to be young and looking towards the unknown with nothing but the relationships we have with the people who will inevitably shape who we mature into. Because that is what the term coming-of-age consists of: events, moments, and people whose presence lingers in every aspect of who we are. 96 Left to right: DIOR dress, necklace, and belt. ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA top and pants and CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN shoes.