It's fair to say Samara Weaving is going places. Her first Hollywood film, The Babysitter, is due for release on Netflix any day now; she has a small part in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the hotly anticipated new film from Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), and a much bigger one in the miniseries remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock; and, on the down side, she's generating enough heat that hackers recently released nude pictures of her to the internet (images, she has claimed, that were faked).
However big she might get, Weaving will always remember Bad Girl, a small, tight, exceptionally well-made thriller from first-time feature writer-director Fin Edquist, which she shot about two years ago.
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Trailer: Bad Girl
Bad girl Amy, 17, is given one last chance by her adoptive parents, who think Amy's friendship with local girl Chloe is a step in the right direction. But when Amy discovers Chloe's secret she finds herself fighting for her life, and for the future of the family she herself tried to destroy.
"It was my first ever feature film, and I'd just come off Home and Away," Weaving says. "How refreshing it was to do something that someone had really poured their heart into. Working with someone who's really passionate about it is great, because you become passionate, and then it's fun, it's not work any more."
The daughter of academic Simon Weaving and niece of actor Hugo, Weaving played Indigo Walker on Home and Away for five years from 2009. She doesn't want to sound ungrateful – soap opera, she says, "is the hardest job in the world" – but there were things a young actor simply doesn't get to do or learn in that particular crucible.
![Girl next door: Samara Weaving as Chloe in the thriller <i>Bad Girl</i>.](/web/20170505114545im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/b/y/1/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvsa8v.png/1493351979313.jpg)
"I've never gone through any proper training," she says. "They say Home and Away is a sort of training ground, and I think it's true, you do learn a lot from that show, but this was completely different. It was two months spending time on 90 minutes [of screen time], and that was something I'd never done before."
Nor had she ever been able to read a script that outlined her character's story arc from beginning to end, because soapies are by their nature ever-evolving (or, if you're feeling less charitable, ever-revolving).
"I loved the fact I could see the end, and I could even work backwards, figuring out what beats made her choices. But at the same time it was terrifying because I'd never done anything like that before.
"I was sort of walking through it blindly, but it was really exciting and liberating, and I think it kicked me into gear. It was, 'You're not on a soap opera any more, this is the next step'."
![With Sara West in <i>Bad Girl</i>.](/web/20170505114545im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/s/a/k/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvsa8v.png/1493351979313.jpg)
For those unaccustomed to the delights of Summer Bay, Weaving's will be a fresh young face. She is 25, but can play much younger – and in Bad Girl, she does.
Though her age is never defined, her character Chloe is likely in her late teens. She simply turns up one day at the modernist home designed by architect Peter Anderson (Ben Winspear) in a paddock in the country town of Serpent, WA.
![Weaving in her <i>Home and Away</i> days.](/web/20170505114545im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/s/a/l/p/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvsa8v.png/1493351979313.jpg)
"It's like a display home," says Amy (Sara West), the surly adopted daughter of Peter and his wife Michelle (Felicity Price) when she first sees the place.
"That's exactly what it is," says Peter.
Chloe arrives on the scene as the seeming antithesis to Amy's pall of negativity. Her blonde hair, glowing skin, beaming smile contrast with Amy's black lipstick, dark beanie and even darker mood. Their attraction to each other is instant.
But is Chloe really as good as she seems? Hell no.
For Weaving, the challenge in playing Chloe was making her real without falling back on standard-issue ticks and tropes.
"I really wanted to steer away from the stereotype of the annoying, bratty teenager," she says. "I wanted to make her mature and a bit more calculating so that the ending paid off and made sense."
Though it ends up squarely in thriller territory, Bad Girl manages along the way to grapple with a range of quite meaty issues, from adoption guilt (on both sides of the fence) to mental illness. But at its heart is the raw intensity of female friendships in the teen years.
"I remember at that age in high school, you did have these fierce relationships with other girls, and if they lied to you or if they hurt your feelings it felt like a betrayal," Weaving says. "You're going through all these hormones, growing boobs and getting periods and things – it's hard. You have all these emotions and you don't know what to do with them.
"I really had a sense of that, this intense friendship that's almost like a lovers' relationship. There's nothing sexual, but all those same intensities are there."
Bad Girl is on limited release from April 27, curiousdistribution.com
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