Maisy Stella Talks My Old Ass , Maddie Ziegler Friendship, Baby Bieber & What She Learned After Child Stardom
Marni Grossman/Prime Video
It's been 12 years since Lennon Stella and Maisy Stella posted their cup-percussion cover of Robyn's “Call Your Girlfriend,” sending them into viral video fame and leading them to star in the country music drama series Nashville for six seasons.
Maisy Stella laughs thinking about that video now, because it helped bring her to one of her closest friends: Maddie Ziegler, who had tweeted the video out at the time, and who Stella had been watching on Dance Moms. They formed a Twitter friendship. “We ended up just messaging and then we became best friends," Stella says.
Now, they're colleagues, with Stella’s latest role starring as Elliott in the new coming-of-age film from director Megan Park (who made The Fallout, starring Ziegler and Jenna Ortega). Fundamentally, My Old Ass is a dialogue between younger Elliott (Stella) and older Elliott (Aubrey Plaza), who cross timeline boundaries to give advice and ask questions to the other as young Elliott prepares to head off to college. (It's also beautifully shot in Muskoka Lakes, Ontario.)
Ziegler has a smaller role as one of Elliott's close friends (alongside Kerrice Brooks), and the chemistry among the three of them feels real. “I'm so affectionate with my friends in my life, and I think a lot of times in movies we don't really see that in friendships of holding hands or being affectionate,” Stella says. "I thought that was so beautiful.”
Below, Maisy Stella talked to Teen Vogue about My Old Ass, her friendship with Ziegler, and why she's glad to have had some space between her child star life on Nashville and her professional acting career.
Teen Vogue: Hi Maisy, how are you? Where are you calling from?
Maisy Stella: I'm good. I'm in the car on the way to the airport.
TV: Where are you headed?
MS: I'm going home. I'm going back to Nashville. I'm so stoked. I miss my cats so much. It's all I'm thinking about right now, my cats.
TV: I'm excited to hear more about your new movie, My Old Ass, which Megan Park directed. You wrote a song for Park's previous film The Fallout — is that the first time you guys interacted, or had you known each other before?
MS: I read the script for Fallout and I taped for it, for Maddie [Ziegler]'s character actually. I knew when I auditioned, I was like, I'm not going to get it. It's for a shy ballerina. I was like, there's no way. I'm just not going to get this. But I loved the script so much that I taped for it and I did a call with Megan and I fell in love with her and I was very connected to the project, but not the character. I was just so connected to Megan. Then me and her kind of stayed in touch and when it came to scoring and doing the music for it, she was missing two songs in the movie and she reached out to me, and then me and my sister ended up writing a song and I ended up singing another song for it.
Then when My Old Ass came around, she told me that she was writing a new movie and I was literally manifesting in my journal. I'm in Megan's next movie. I just felt it in my bones that I was meant to work with her at some point.
TV: Maddie, of course, is also in My Old Ass, playing part of your character's friend group. You and Maddie have been friends for a while, right?
MS: Yeah, literally since we were nine and 10.
TV: How did you guys meet?
MS: It makes me laugh every time I think about it. I remember messaging her off of my iPad on Twitter. We were babies and we were on Twitter. She tweeted the cup song video that me and my sister did, and then I soon after saw the Sia video and tweeted the Sia video, “Chandelier.” So we were just fans of each other and I was watching Dance Moms at the time and we ended up just messaging and then we became best friends. We would video chat every single day and then we just literally stayed in each other's lives forever and then as we got older, we just got closer and closer. But yeah.
TV: That's such a good pop culture encapsulation of that time period: the cup video and the Sia music video.
MS: Literally it was. It's so funny and just to think back on me on texting her off on my iPad makes me want to cry. It's just so cute. Literal babies.
TV: What is your friendship like now? What do you love the most about her?
MS: Oh my God. I mean, Maddie's always been such a good friend to me and her family as well. I'm really close with her sister and yeah, we've always been sister friends. She's also really close with my sister. We're all just very, very sisterly with each other just because we've literally grown up holding hands. Maddie's just a very gentle and sensitive person and she's always remained the same. I've never felt a shift in her ever. She's always been a very consistent person in my life and yeah, she's beyond supportive and loving and I would know by now if there was something wrong with her. She's lovely.
TV: Love that. When you first read the script, were there things you immediately were like, oh, I've felt this, or I've been through this?
MS: Literally so much. Elliott was my end all be all. I was like, oh my God, this character. Just the thought of even being considered to play a character that was written with so much love was very crazy to me because, I don't know, I feel like I'd watched so many coming of age movies and so many movies where the lead character is very brooding and mysterious and has just this undeniable darkness to them. When I read the script, I was like, what is this lead character that doesn't really have a darkness necessarily, but still has a deepness and a weight to her, and she's still a layered character, but not layered in darkness?
I found the family dynamics to be really relatable to be like 18 and getting caught up in your own world and in your friends and people you're dating or whatever, and then accidentally being a dick to your parents. I very much felt that and [have] had the moment of recognition where you look at your mom and you just feel sad and guilty and you're just like, oh, I love you. You're just a girl and you're trying your best.
TV: It feels like such a pivotal age, where you realize people do actually care how you treat them, like your family. Did working on this make you think about who you want to be in 15, 20 years?
MS: Absolutely, yeah. We talked about this a lot [on set] — the act of talking to your future self and talking to your younger self was very therapeutic and emotional. I felt very emotional for the whole duration of filming, even though a lot of it lives in comedy, it's still just every part of it felt really tender and emotional to me. I was so softened by it, and I feel like when I filmed it, I was the same as Elliott at the start where I thought I had all these things figured out. I thought Elliott was so much more naive than me and I was like, dude, I've already had all these [experiences]. I just was 18.
TV: This is kind of your first big project as an adult. What was that like coming off of all these years of being on Nashville and figuring out what you wanted to do? What was that time period like?
MS: Well, My Old Ass to me felt like such a different lifetime than Nashville. To me, Nashville was real childhood bliss and very, very beautiful, but I didn't even know really what was going on. And then when I finished Nashville, I went back to school, I had four years of just being me and being a kid and doing dumb shit and I did all the things that I really, really wanted to do when I was working. I really romanticized going to high school and having a locker and doing all these things and going to prom, and I did all that.
TV: It does feel like perfect timing to end a show like that right as you're becoming a teenager, and then to have these years to just be yourself, find out who you are.
MS: And to grow and think was the main thing. I feel like when you're young and working, it's like... Not to [insult] anyone that has continued working forever, but you kind of forget to grow and you forget to think. I feel like I was just kind of on autopilot for a lot of [Nashville], you're in such a routine. That's such a big part of those years that I wasn't working was just, I don't know, actually thinking and making decisions and choices, and it was just very, very important for me as a person to have those years.
TV: You've previously talked about how Lennon [Stella] has kind of been a version of your older self in the way you've gotten to see her do these things before. What do you think you've learned the most from her?
MS: Oh my gosh. Lennon has always kind of taught me her lessons, where she'll go through something and then I really do kind of follow in her footsteps, and she's my roadmap in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's like, oh, I don't actually make a lot of mistakes for myself because I'm like, Lennon did that and I'm not going to do that too. She's very strong. Lennon is a very, very strong person, and she's very much instilled strength into me, and she is the definition of... To me, she's so feminist. I know that word is kind of overused, but she's so, so, so feminist and has always really instilled in me just strength and vulnerability and gentle power. I've really learned more from her than probably anyone in my life.
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TV: I was watching your recent Jimmy Kimmel appearance, and you were talking about the scene in My Old Ass where your character becomes Justin Bieber in “One Less Lonely Girl.” I'm curious, are you a Reneé Rapp fan?
MS: Yeah, I love her. She's great. There was a video of her doing “One Less Lonely Girl,” and I saw that after I'd already filmed [My Old Ass] and I was like, oh my God, it's coming back.
TV: I love that it's this generationally very important piece of culture. Why do you think that Justin Bieber performance has resonated?
MS: I think the Bieber power is pretty huge. It's just him. I think if anyone else had done it, I don't think it wouldn't have had the same effect, but Baby Bieber was... That swag was unreal. He could really do anything.
TV: I was thinking about the big picture of this movie and the idea that you get older and you realize that grief can be so painful, maybe that it's the most painful thing. It makes sense to me, this instinct to go back and try to prevent yourself from feeling a future pain, if that's ever possible. Did working on this project make you think about anything specific with aging, losing people, working through hard things?
MS: Really, it did. I think it did to a lot of the people that even just worked on the movie. Especially [because of] where we were filming, it just felt like our feet were touching so much grass. We all turned into little hippies during filming of this. We were just like, time goes by so quickly. I think for me, it did [make me think] a lot about my parents and grief for sure. I, after filming, lost someone in my life, and it was such a... I still remember thinking about the concept of the movie so much through that, and it's just such a beautiful thing to [look to]. I loved Megan's choices in the movie. It felt like I took a lot from Elliott's — this word sounds cringe — bravery. Choosing to love even though you're going to get hurt felt very moving to me.
TV: As far as what is coming next for you, you have this movie with Anne Hathaway, Flowervale Street. What did you guys connect over when you first started working on it?
MS: She's the best. I think that something happens with women that have been in the industry for a long time when they meet a younger woman that's starting out. Genuinely I've experienced this type of bond and it's really, really special, and it's just this feeling of knowing; it's a connection of “you just get it.” I think that a lot of times they feel this protection and care and want to help guide. I obviously was so beside myself to be around her and working with her and learning from her, and I can't even explain to you how unreal she is of an actor, but also her work, her drive was the craziest thing I've ever seen. She didn't complain one time and she was just so motivated and good to people. She was so kind. We just kind of clicked and we were also playing mother and daughter, which always gets you in there pretty quickly. You sink into that feeling, and she was making sure I had electrolytes in my water and was very motherly. But yeah, I think something really does happen with a woman who's been in the industry for a while and someone who's just starting out — they kind of cling on to each other.
TV: Are you still writing songs? Would you and Lennon ever make something together again, like a full album or something?
MS: Me and Lennon have always talked about when we're older, later down the line, doing one album together, something just for the love of it. I write all the time. I'm definitely pretty sunk into where I'm at right now, in acting. I really would love to write for a film or score or do something in that world. My mind changes about it a lot, but when I do write or when there's a piece that I'm like, oh, I really want to share this, I'll post a clip of it or something. I don't want to properly release music. But yeah, I'm always writing and will always be writing. I don't think I'll ever stop writing in my whole life. It's too deeply engraved in there.
TV: What is something you're excited about in your non-working life?
MS: I'm so excited I'm going home right now. I'm going to the cabin with my best friend this weekend for my friend's birthday. Really excited about that. I'm such a friend in my life, I feel like when I'm not working, I just have such good people in my life that I'm excited to get to spend time with my people and my family.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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