However maybe one of many issues the present does finest is serve up nostalgia. Whereas season one befell within the early ’90s, season two takes us again to the Y2K period, which has seen its personal resurgence in current months. Stanley was born in 2001, too younger to have correctly skilled the early aughts, however because of its Gen Z–impressed comeback each culturally and within the style world, Y2K was already influencing the developments in her life by the point the Merciless Summer season script got here her method. “I’m already beginning to put on low-rise denims and dishevelled pants, and the Y2K hairstyles and issues are all coming again,” Stanley tells me. “Even the music, it’s all coming again, so I used to be like, ‘That is good. Everybody goes to find it irresistible, together with me.’”
Once I ask about Megan’s Y2K wardrobe particularly, Stanley’s eyes gentle up. She recollects the various conversations and fittings that went into Megan’s three very distinct seems. “For the primary timeline … it’s a waterfront city, it’s a bit bit coastal, and he or she’s a youthful teenager. She’s a late bloomer, so she’s not likely exhibiting midriff or something. She’s form of a tomboy, so we did plenty of T-shirts [and] denims, and overalls was a factor I [pushed for].” Stanley tells me the second timeline, winter 1999, is after we begin to see Isabella’s affect on Megan. She’s loosening up a bit, and we see extra midriff and extra of these early 2000s developments. The third timeline brilliantly makes use of style and make-up to point out that Megan is clearly masking one thing or utilizing her look to guard herself. “That was an entire dialogue and many completely different trials,” Stanley says. “We tried completely different hairstyles, completely different eye make-up, a lot of completely different piercings, nostril piercing, eyebrow piercing, and completely different garments.”
Each new job for Stanley is sort of a grasp class in performing, whether or not she’s studying from the opposite actors she’s working with or being pushed out of her consolation zone by a difficult taking pictures format. On Merciless Summer season, she was grateful to have castmate Lexi Underwood by her facet. The 2 bonded immediately and are nonetheless shut in the present day. “It’s nerve-racking going into something like this. It’s completely different from something I’ve completed earlier than, and I needed to do a very good job, and Lexi is such a professional and so pretty to work with and such a terrific scene accomplice,” she says. Earlier this yr, Stanley starred within the movie Someplace in Queens reverse two different business professionals, Ray Romano and Laurie Metcalf. “To be in scenes with them or simply be within the neighborhood was unimaginable and made me higher,” she says.
