NKD Mag - Issue #51 (September 2015)

SEPT. musicians: 10 JAKE MILLER on his steady rise to fame

16 THE MOTH & THE FLAME on the rise and stuck in your head

44 SAINT MOTEL the coachella act you won’t forget

actors: 04 JODI LYN O’KEEFE from mystic falls to los angeles

18 BEX TAYLOR-KLAUS mtv’s scream’s fan-favorite

26 PAIGE SPARA the adorkable new abc family star

38 JOHANNA BRADDY

tv’s freshest new face

40 MCKALEY MILLER

scream queens’ secret weapon

double threats: 06 HAYLEY KIYOKO bouncing between the stage and set

22 MEGAN NICOLE youtube singer turned movie star

28 KATIE STEVENS coast-hopping for her passions

creator: CATHERINE POWELL

editors: JORDAN MELENDREZ CATHERINE POWELL

writers: SHELBY CHARGIN TARA DEVINCENZO DUSTIN HEVERON BRITTANY LAMBAU JORDAN MELENDREZ CHRISTINE O’DEA SHINA PATEL CATHERINE POWELL RYAN SLOAN RILEY STENHEJEM KATELYN THOMPSON

photography: CATHERINE POWELL

design: CATHERINE POWELL

JODI LYN O’KEEFE Words by TARA DEVINCENZO Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by BIANCA DIMILLO

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On paper, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe is a typical, New Jersey-born Irish Catholic girl.

When you speak to her, you can tell she was never just typical. Now, looking at her lengthy filmography, it is somewhat of a stretch to imagine her as shy and introverted.

At a young age, she was very small before shooting up 9 inches in one summer.

“She didn’t know how I survived it, the growing pains,” she says of her mother’s reaction to her height. “I was awkward as hell, I really was.”

By the time she was 8 or 9 years old, she found herself entering the modeling business for no other reason than to start a college fund. The idea spawned somewhat from her older sister Heather, who Jodi says was 6 feet tall and “jaw-droppingly beautiful.”

“They asked me if I wanted to do it, I never really had any big desire,” Jodi recalls. Her desire finally peaked when she saw her cousin in the business as well.

The perks of going to shows and securing auditions sealed the deal for Jodi, so she gave it a shot.

She was mostly doing low-profile catalog modeling, still with the intention of it being strictly a job. Suddenly, and accidentally, she found herself switching gears from modeling to acting. “Someone gave me a script, I read it, and then they asked me what I thought about it,” she says. “My whole world changed.”

As her new path began to open up in front of her, she remembers it being a rocky start. Auditioning for the same movie no less than a dozen times, no one knew who she was, but the calls starting coming in from people who were interested in finding out. “It accidentally made me realize who I am, which is kind of incredible,” she says.

Acting ended up rerouting her college plans. She booked a soap opera at the old NBC Studios in Brooklyn, followed by a

job in San Francisco.

“Basically all of the prep to get the college fund has never stopped,” she says.

“College of life, I guess.”

The 36-year-old bombshell has since found comfort in her own skin, but it took years to get to that point. When roles started to be booked, she admits she had no preference as to what the character was, so long as she was working in her newfound trade. “I went in thinking, this is heaven.

It’s so nice to be anyone but myself,” Jodi says.

Her latest project, the third season of VH1 series Hit the Floor, has given her a chance to have a total on-screen alias.

Different from doing a movie character and seeing it from start to finish, being the same character on television is riveting to Jodi. “You get to put your claws in it,” she explains. “You can really find out who they are and do the development and get to sit with them for a while.”

Stepping in as Lionel, ex-wife of star basketball coach Pete Davenport (Dean Cain), she’s been able to unleash things within her to portray this vindictive and love-drunk vixen. “All the stuff that happens in my head, she actually gets to do.”

She knows that even through her devilish ways, Lionel is inherently a dire romantic, which Jodi finds relatable. “That’s the squishy soft side of me that gets to come to Lionel,” she says.

It isn’t just an estranged wife that has helped her to vent some of her otherwise under-wraps traits. “I see bits of myself in everything,” she says. “It’s all me. It’s all the things that are inside me.” On the set of The Vampire Diaries, as the complex doctor Jo Laughlin, she was able to have some of her deepest traits see the light. Even though she’s caught up in a supernatural world of murderous witches and vampires, she admits, “it all comes from somewhere.”

Having characters draw so much emotion from fans is mind-blowing, Jodi says. When Jo met her end in a Game of Thrones-style wedding on The Vampire Diaries, she was shocked to see the influx of tweets about her character, specifically the hashtag campaign begging the producers to #BringBackJo. “If that’s not a compliment, I don’t know what is,” she says.

The flattery she saw on social media is just as easily followed with negativity. The idea of having such a strong presence is something she just learned was important.

She lost a role once to another actor with a bigger following, and she was shocked into social media submission. She realizes it is a good way for her to connect, but she thinks the more important aspect is how people can become sensations and create their own careers from the many platforms.“I like the idea of a new frontier where you can put out content without having to actually ask for permission anymore,” she says.

She describes her feelings on it like a pendulum, going back and forth, but ultimately sees it as a good thing. “It’s a double-edged sword,” she says. “I want to get the followers, and I hate social media because of all of the negativity, but look at all the good it’s doing.”

Jodi has been working on maintaining her online presence after seeing how

people truly get concerned when she is silent for even a few days. But for Jodi, she needs to disconnect and unwind when she gets time off work. For the first half of the year, she was flying between Atlanta and Los Angeles three times a week for her parts on The Vampire Diaries and Hit the Floor. The planes were not her time to rest, but a time to regroup. “It gave me four hours to figure out where I was headed and who I was that day,” she says.

“It was the hardest champagne problem I’ve ever had.”

Now that she has wrapped Hit the Floor for the season and met her end on The Vampire Diaries, she is getting a chance to breathe before looking to the next project. “I bit off maybe a little bit more than I could chew this year,” she says. “But I wouldn’t change any of it.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

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HAYLEY KIYOKO Words by RILEY STENEHJEM Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair by DEREK WILLIAMS Make-Up by MARLA VAZQUEZ Styling by JORDAN STOLCH

Actress and musician Hayley Kiyoko may be recognized from her early roles as Stella from the Disney Channel original movie Lemonade Mouth (2011) or as the glasses-wearing sleuth Velma from the live-action Scooby Doo films. But these days, Hayley may be known for a lot more. Whether it’s a new feature film, a hit procedural drama or an EP release, Hayley’s been making strides in her careers, both on screen and on stage.

Hayley grew up with a love for music. “[It] was my first passion and something I always wanted to pursue,” she says. She started off playing the drums at a young age, and from there picked up other instruments.

“I fell in love with percussion and rhythm,” Hayley remarks. “As I continued to be a songwriter, the more instruments you learn, the better

songwriter you are and the more outlets you have to create. So I play a little bit of everything.” She’s still a drummer at heart, and still plays percussion during her live performances. “ I trigger all the sounds, too,” she adds, “so I bring that skill set back to my life.”

Her second EP, This Side of Paradise, came out in February. Making the EP was a process of self-discovery for Hayley, as she fine-tuned her sound and songwriting. Throughout this process, she found a lot of juxtaposition in her music. “If you listen to the lyrics, it’s kind of a sad song, kind of a song of, like, being in a one-sided relationship, but sonically and melodically it’s very uplifting and inspiring,” Hayley explains. As for her songwriting, she strives to create and tell stories. “I like to take my personal feelings and emotions and put it into a situation or a story, and storytell,” she says. This EP has been an overall success, and one that Hayley takes pride in. “I feel like the EP is 100 percent who I am, and I feel really proud of it,” she remarks.

“It’s very exciting how people are starting to notice it more and actually listen to it.”

When writing, Hayley almost always begins with the beat, builds off that and finishes with lyrics. The exception to this: “Girls Like Girls,” the LGBT-positive anthem from This Side of Paradise. “We created the song in a very bizarre way. I just improvised over the beat for like three and a half minutes, and then we actually reversed my vocals so it was playing backwards, and then we would chop it up,” Hayley explains.

“We created the vocal melody like we were conducting. It was actually a really cool way of creating a melody and a top line. I haven’t done anything like that before.” “Girls Like Girls” is special not only because of the unique way it was crafted, but because of its music video, which Hayley co-directed.

Though just five minutes long, the video tells the coming-of-age story of two young girls and reinforces the LGBT support found in the lyrics.

The story and visuals behind the 8

song were something Hayley had in mind from the very early writing process. “I knew I wanted to do a coming-of-age story, but I wasn’t quite sure what the drama was going to be like,” she explains. “When I wrote the bridge, the instrumental, I knew I wanted to have some kind of drama happen. That you have to discover and kind of figure out, and find the right amount of drama without it being too over the top and still realistic, so that was kind of the tricky part.”

Though she wasn’t sure exactly where the story might go, the details were very concrete in her mind. “I definitely envisioned the video set in the late ’90s, and the coloring of the yellows and the oranges. I definitely was seeing that as I was writing the song,” she recalls.

The video was shot and turned around in a very quick, very stressful process, but one that Hayley says was enriching. “It was the best kind of stress because everyone involved was extremely passionate about the project,” she explains. “I was really overwhelmed and so thankful to see the product. When you put so much heart and passion and time behind a project, you know there’s going to be something where you go, ‘Oh, I could’ve done this better, or I could’ve done that better,’ but it’s a video where my vision was fully realized. I have no regrets.”

Hayley has been busy with her acting career as well. This half of her life started middle school, when she took roles in school plays as well as TV commercials. From there, she starred in Scooby Doo and Lemonade Mouth and appeared as a guest star on The Vampire Diaries, The Fosters and Wizards of Waverly Place.

Though her Scooby Doo days are behind her, Hayley still solves crimes as Raven Ramirez in CSI: Cyber, which is in production for the second season now. “It’s fun having a fake FBI badge and pretending you save the world,” she says. “It’s always challenging, and I feel like I learn a lot. A lot of the episodes are based off of real life, and stuff that happens in the real world, so you really do

learn a lot about how technology can affect the world on a very real scale.”

Luckily, the writers explain most of the technical aspects, so there’s not too much research left for Hayley to do. “Obviously it’s a lot of work in general,” she remarks, “and a lot of, like, memorizing definitions.”

This October, Hayley will star in the upcoming feature film Jem and the Holograms, a reboot of the 1980s animated television series of the same name. The modern-day adaptation follows Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peeples) as she and her band, Jem and the Holograms, are boosted to international stardom. Hayley’s character, Aja, is one of the band members. She gets to play bass and guitar and even a little bit of drums.

“I’m really excited for everyone to see it,” she says. “It’s a great way to introduce Jem and the Holograms to a new generation and to the original fans of Jem, as well.”

In addition to the other two acting gigs, she’s also starring in a Netflix film, XoXo. The film follows six strangers who all meet at the biggest EDM festival in the United States. Because the film is set at a rave, there are a lot of extravagant costumes and props. “I got really dressed up and had, like, crystals on my face. The outfits that people wear at raves are insane,” Hayley says. “It’s going to be really colorful and awesome. It’s going to be a very visually pleasing film.” Production for the movie just finished, and it should be released sometime later this year.

As for what’s next, Hayley hopes to just continue moving forward.

“My goal would be to just keep doing music and acting,” she remarks.

“I would like my music to get to the next level where lots of people are listening to it. Hopefully tour next year and release another single or my first album.”

At her core is a true passion for what she does, and it’s what keeps her pushing to the next level as an actress and as a musician.

“I just love creating,” she says. “I love creating, I love the hustle, I love the challenge, and I’m just going to keep doing it. NKD

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JAKE MILLER Words by CHRISTINE O’DEA Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Jake Miller has been putting in the hours for years now, but the past two years have been the most rewarding ones that he has ever had. Between signing a major record deal, performing in his hometown arena and dropping music he’s proud of, Jake is slowly becoming one of pop’s key players. At the beginning of his summer headlining tour and just a day after the release of his new EP, Rumors, Jake had plenty to say about what’s going on and what’s coming next.

NKD: Let’s recap the past two years.

Jake Miller: I’ve been recording a lot in L.A. I just released a brand new EP called Rumors that went straight to number one on iTunes because of my fans who are awesome. And I’m now on tour. This is my second show on tour, and it’s the best and biggest show that we’ve put on, so I’m super excited.

NKD: In the time since we last spoke, you signed with Warner Bros. Why Warner?

JM: They showed me and proved to me that they would make me a priority over there at their label, and they were very

enthusiastic about me and still are, and there’s just great people there. I think we make a good team, and they’re a great label, so I’m proud to say that I’m an artist signed to Warner Brothers. It’s one of the biggest labels in the world.

NKD: So this new EP was a bit of a surprise.

JM: I dropped it without telling anybody.

Five brand new songs and stuff that I’ve been working on in L.A. There’s a song called “Rumors,” “Shake It,” “Selfish Girls,” “Yellow Lights” and “Sunshine.”

They’re all different records; some that make you laugh, cry, want to dance, just a bunch of different stuff for everybody, so it’s a really cool variety.

NKD: Why the surprise release?

JM: We’ve just never done anything like that. I thought it would be a cool surprise for the fans right before tour to get them even more excited for tour and give them an incentive to get tickets and definitely learn the words of the songs before coming to the show. They will have new songs to watch me perform because for the last few months I’ve been performing the same few songs, so it’s cool that I get

to perform new songs now, and they get to sing along to new tracks.

NKD: How long have these songs been a work in progress?

JM: I’ve made all of them in the last six months.

NKD: When you’re putting together an EP, how are you picking these songs and how did you decide that these were the five that you were going to release?

JM: You kind of just know. I have a certain vibe that I’m going for, and it was summertime so I wanted to make a few cool records that would make people want to dance and have fun, so that would probably be “Rumors,” “Shake It” and “Yellow Lights.” Then I had this other song called “Selfish Girls” that I wrote and produced on the guitar, and it’s just so different than anything else I’ve ever done. It’s more of a John Mayer acoustic vibe, and then we have the last song on the EP, which is called “Sunshine.” It’s a song I dedicated to a friend who passed away to give it a little more of an emotional ending to the EP. That’s probably the fan-favorite for now, and we have a

music video coming up for that soon so that will be really powerful.

NKD: What’s the fan reaction so far to these?

JM: Amazing. It’s been two days straight and still number one over Taylor Swift.

I’ve been getting funny tweets saying that each song is their favorite from different people, so it’s cool that I could have five songs that are reacting well on an EP. NKD: Let’s talk about tour — you said it’s the biggest show you’ve ever done. What does that mean?

What do fans expect from it?

JM: Besides having new music, which is the most exciting part for me, I just have a bigger stage. I used to just come on stage to a flat stage and perform. Now I have stairs, lights, confetti … I don’t want to give everything away, but it’s a bigger stage now, and it’s more of a visual experience for the fans, and it’s more of a light show, epic show. It’s more than just coming on stage and performing. Now there’s more of a visual aspect to it.

NKD: What was it like for you building the show since you had never done anything this big?

JM: We had two days in New Jersey for rehearsal — 12 hour days — long days. I have a sound guy now and a lighting guy who I had never traveled with before, so 12

everything is so much more professional than the last time I toured. Everyone here is so hard-working, and they all know what they’re doing. I had so many ideas and so much creative things running through my head in terms of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to switch it up from my last show, so it wasn’t too hard actually putting the show together, but rehearsing took a long time and getting everything perfect.

NKD: For fans who have come to see you before, besides the

visuals, what new things are you doing?

JM: I’m playing live instruments, which I’ve never done before. I’m performing a song called “Selfish Girls” off a new EP, which is acoustic, and I’m doing a few other covers of some popular songs, and a few other things. I don’t want to give away all the surprises but definitely some cool surprises.

NKD: Did you grow up playing guitar?

JM: Yeah, I taught myself how to play

guitar and drums. I’m not amazing at either of them, but I like to play them and jam out. So this is the first time I’m getting in front of a crowd and getting to play them and sing at the same time.

Last night was the first time, and the crowd really loved it, so it went well.

NKD: What else are you working on now besides music?

JM: We’re working on new music videos for this new EP. In terms of new music, I don’t really know if what’s coming next is going to be in a form of a single, EP

or album, and I don’t know when it’s coming out. I just know that as an artist, you never really stop recording because that’s your job — to keep supplying the fans with new music. So I’m always going to be recording new stuff. When I get off tour, I’m going to be moving to L.A., and I’m going to probably be in the studio pretty much every night, so there’s never going to be a shortage of videos or music. I just don’t know when the next thing is coming out.

NKD: In terms of moving, why is this the right time? I’m surprised you haven’t moved there already.

JM: Well I feel like I already had because every time I got there to record, the label put me up in L.A. for months at a time, so I feel like I’ve already kind of moved there. When the tour is over my lease in Miami is up, so I figured might as well make the move out there. It’s the best place to be for someone like me who does what I do.

NKD: What have the past two years been like spending so much time in L.A. and working with music constantly and having the support of a major label?

JM: It’s been great. I mean I feel like I’ve really matured and grown as an artist and as a person. I’ve met so many amazing people who have really helped me master my craft — great writers and producers who have been in the studio and showed me what it takes to make a great song and what it takes to write great lyrics. I think everything from the show to the music to the videos is just growing and maturing.

NKD: On your last EP, you had a few collaborations. What’s it like to work with these established artists and having them want to work with you?

JM: It’s an amazing feeling. Travie was someone that I listened to and still listen to. When I was a kid I always listened to Gym Class Heroes, so just having him on one of my tracks is an honor. Not only did he like the song enough to be on it but the fact that it’s him, and I use to listen to him, is really cool. He’s a really cool dude. I met him at the music video shoot and he’s a really nice, down-toNKDMAG.COM

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earth, humble guy. I hope to collaborate with more people that are as cool as him.

NKD: Who’s on your bucket list for collaborations?

JM: In a perfect world I would like to collab with Justin Bieber, maybe Drake, Taylor Swift, someone in that area.

NKD: Who are some artists that you’re listening to now that are inspiring the sound that you’re making?

JM: I feel like I’m always listening to the same music. When I’m chilling or on a plane I listen to John Mayer. When I’m working out and I need to get hype I listen to Drake or Big Sean, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t really listen to too much music besides that.

NKD: After this tour, what else is on your agenda?

JM: Keep doing what I’m doing — keep making music, keep shooting videos, and hopefully another tour by the end of the year. Just keep doing what I’m doing on bigger scales.

NKD: What are some things that you’ve accomplished in the past few years that kind of seemed farfetched when you first started?

JM: The fact that my EP went number one 10 minutes after it was released as a surprise. There are things like that, that have happened throughout my career that just make me stop and appreciate everything and appreciate the fans because I couldn’t do any of this without them. Seeing my album in stores in Target and buying that was an amazing accomplishment. Performing in my hometown arena. Things like that just make me stop and appreciate everything.

NKD: What are some goals that you haven’t accomplished yet?

JM: I would love to win a Grammy. I would love to have a song go platinum.

And besides that, I don’t have too many other goals. I just want to keep doing what I’m doing. As long as I’m happy and making the fans happy and keep making good music. I do what I love for a living with my best friends and travel the country together, so I don’t really have anything to complain about. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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THE MOTH THE FLAME 16

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Words by SHINA PATEL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

The Moth & The Flame, an alt-rock band based in Los Angeles, consists of four Utah natives; Brandon Robbins (guitar), Mark Garbett (keyboards), Andrew Tolman (drums), and Michael Goldman (bass). The band first formed when Brandon and Mark met, and the growth and development from that moment was always organic and never rushed. At the time, Brandon was doing an acoustic performance and Mark was impressed and decided to approach him about making music together.

After they started writing and playing, Andrew met up with the duo and immediately liked some of the songs they had done together. So he auditioned for

the band and became their drummer.

When they all decided that this band was something special and not just something they were doing in passing, they decided to move to L.A. It was in L.A. that Mike joined the band thus completing the line up of The Moth & The Flame we know today.

After their move to L.A. in 2013, the band released an EP titled Ampersand. They recorded this EP with Joey Waronker, the drummer for Atoms for Peace. Since then they have stayed busy: They released the single “Young & Unafraid” in April and have been working on their full-length album as well.

Although the single might be the only work the band has released officially, it is not their only music available to their fans. They have a sort of “hidden” album of the initial songs that Brandon and Mark had recorded before meeting with Andrew and Michael. It was released in early 2012, but they don’t sell it online; it is available exclusively at their live shows. It’s a special gift for those fans dedicated enough to even want them. “In a way, we keep it to ourselves and for the fans who know us and have been following us since the beginning,” Andrew says.

“Young & Unafraid” has been popular since it’s release. It has already reached 1 million streams on Spotify and has landed its way to the worldwide Spotify Viral Chart. The song currently sits at No. 48 on Alternative Radio and is making its way up the Sirius XM Alt Nation Alt 18 Chart. It is a clear indication of the anticipation and excitement that is surrounding the release of the full-length album.

When making music, the band tends to focus on each song individually because they understand that every songs is different. “The four of us try to be as open as possible with where the ideas come from and the flow of the songs,” Andrew explains. Ultimately, the band tries to do what is best for the emotion of the song in the lyrical content and the music components of it. Each song comes about differently in the sense that sometimes Brandon could be playing around with a simple idea and make a song, and it could be perfect as is, so they leave it alone. Other times they could start with a simple idea and

build upon it to help it reach its full potential. Although it may be challenging at times, they do their best to work through it together.

“Young & Unafraid” came from a transitional period in their lives. They wrote the song when they were moving from Utah to L.A., and they were leaving behind a life to basically start over.

Although it is sometimes hard for four musical minds to come together and agree on what should be done, they try to be mindful of one another’s opinions.

“Ultimately, the product of The Moth & The Flame is something that we think is better with all four us giving input rather than just one person,” Andrew says.

Soon after their single dropped, the band was approached by Jeff Castelaz, the head of Elektra Records, a major American record label owned by Warner Music Group. Jeff was impressed the first time after he heard the single “Young & Unafraid,” and they signed with Elektra in 2014, right before they were about to release their new album independently. They felt comfortable with Jeff because they knew he had a stellar reputation with everyone in the music business, and he was the type of person to actually care about the bands he signed; he stuck by with his artists through it all. “He signs bands based on really loving their music,” Andrew says. After signing and feeling a positive relationship forming with the label as a whole, The Moth & The Flame were advised to put off the record for a little bit.

Although TMTF are a relatively new in the music scene, they are not inexperienced, especially when it comes to live shows and touring. They were huge hits at Austin’s South By Southwest festival and The Great Escape festival in England. In the fall of 2014, they toured with Placebo, and they have been on the road with Big Data, The Naked and Famous and Imagine Dragons, who are longtime friends since Andrew used to be their drummer.

This fall, the band will be releasing their new album, which has been in the works for a few years now, and they will be on a full U.S. tour with In The Valley Below. “We’re excited to finally get our new music out to the open and people to start listening to it,” Andrew explains. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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BEX TAYLOR-KLAUS Words by JORDAN MELENDREZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair by CASTILLO

Born and raised in Atlanta, Bex Taylor-Klaus followed her passion to act to Los Angeles at the age of 18, and hasn’t looked back. Though the 21-year-old spent time before her move jet-setting between Los Angeles and Atlanta during summers and pilot programs, Bex finally settled in L.A. with one of her closest 18

friends, and with her friend’s mother and brother by her side. “Before I moved out here, I was doing a lot of back-and-forth between Atlanta to L.A., and my parents would be out here and another would have to go back while another would stay,” Bex recalls. “My parents decided that paying for acting classes would be

cheaper than therapy growing up, at least that’s the joke they always say, but it wasn’t cheaper, because then I moved out to L.A.” Acting was not her only passion growing up. “I had three fairly unattainable goals: I wanted to be an actor, a professional softball player or a forensic scientist.” Though

softball consumed a large portion of Bex’s time when she was growing up, once the possibility of a career in acting became a reality, there was no turning back. “I’ve been doing acting for fun since I was a kid, and I never really saw it as a career option until I was about 16,” Bex states. “Then it went really quickly, I realized it was

a possibility and I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’”

There is a moment in every actor’s life when they realize the real possibility of a career in the industry. For Bex, that moment took place during her first job, The Killing.

Now, Bex has established herself as a forced to be reckoned with. “I

didn’t start into the industry like most other people in Hollywood, my first job right out the gate was a series regular on an AMC TV show,” Bex explains. “It’s probably the work I am most proud of. I know it was my first job, and if I could go back I would tweak little things that I might be able to better now, but I’m really NKDMAG.COM

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proud of the work I did.”

“I feel like saying ‘I’m lucky’ diminishes from the work I put into it,” she adds. “But at the same time, I was in the right place at the right time, and I went out for the right role with the right choices. So it’s a little bit of luck and, hopefully, a lot of talent.”

After her work on The Killing ended, Bex says she immediately went back to the grind, auditioning and exploring all opportunities. “For me, it was a surprising amount of ‘Hey, we saw you do this, and we want to see if you can do this,’ and when I heard that, it made me feel a little bit stronger in any choice I made,” she says. “I just have to be confident in it.” Her work on The Killing, Bex says, introduced her to a diverse field of opportunities. “The Killing definitely sparked a lot of interesting roles, just because it was such an interesting character, such an interesting job.”

Bex spent her time after The Killing working on a variety of shows, including Arrow and House of Lies, and now she is starring as Audrey in the TV adaptation of the horror franchise Scream. This TV series follows the teenagers of Lakewood after a cyberbullying incident goes viral, unveiling a web of troubling secrets and introducing a serial killer on the rise. “We’re on the same network as Catfish, and there’s something to be said for that,” Bex says. “We get to see just how much can go wrong on the Internet with these poor kids in real life, and then we get to see how things can go more wrong in fantasy world. But Catfish is there as a reminder that there is a real aspect to this.”

Technology had not only become and extremely influential on our individual lives and social culture, but it has heavily influenced the direction the horror genre has taken.

“You see that in Scream, and you see all the social media connections and the independence of them going off alone and not seeing their parents for hours and their parents will be fine as long as you send a text or a phone call, and it’s almost more scary now because there’s so many ways that 20

people can get you and get to you,” Bex states. “Technology is supposed to help us and make us feel safe, but just like anything else, it can be used for evil, and I love exploring that in horror. I love that the horror genre explores all the bad things, not just ‘What if some random psycho killer is stalking us?’ but ‘What if some random psycho killer is stalking you, and is good at it?’”

Bex’s filming experience with this series has been far from normal.

“Every single time we got a script, there would be a moment of needing to read the script to know what’s happening, but also needing to read the script to know if we’re dying,” she explains. “In a show like Scream, everything is ever-changing, and the writers know what they’re doing and what they want to happen. So does the network and so does the producer, but, as actors, we know nothing.

We know when it happens, and they like to keep us on our toes.”

She laughs before saying, “No one is safe, not even Emma.”

Though the constant development of the series keeps Bex on her toes, she notes that the element of uncertainty about whether the next day filming will be her last introduced a high level of appreciation for all the opportunities working on the show has offered. “It almost makes you appreciate everything more. We got to run through a real abandoned hospital in the middle of Louisiana,” she says. “We get to do all of these really cool things, and part of knowing that we might not be there for the full season really gives you the mindset that ‘These are the cool things that I get to do, let me enjoy them. These are the cool things that my friends get to do that I don’t get to do, let me be happy for them.’”

Even though Bex is still young, her appreciation for her craft and the business promises a strong presence and longevity in acting — even if her characters don’t have that certainty.

“It’s really about perspective, and you can’t let yourself get down,” she says.

“You just have to remind yourself that all of this is the best job in the world.” NKD

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MEGAN NICOLE Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Megan Nicole has always been reaching for the stars. Quite literally, actually, because she wanted to be an astronaut when she was a child. But now, the 22-year-old singer/songwriter/actress is reaching for more metaphorical stars.

Megan grew up a shy kid in Texas.

She would only socialize with her friends and avoided speaking in class as much as possible. “I was always known as the quiet girl in school,” she says. When she was 10, her parents signed her up for piano lessons, which eventually paved the way for her to join her church’s youth group band. By 15, she had the itch for music and began learning guitar. It wasn’t long before the switch went off in her head and she began writing her own songs and using music as her way to express herself. She started to come out of her shell.

Megan had been performing at various open-mic nights, talent shows and Houston-area fairs before her dad suggested she post videos to YouTube. “I never expected it would be such an amazing platform to reach out to people all over the world,” she says. “I was no longer just connecting to people in the Houston area.” The build up of her fan base was slow but steady until she did a collaboration video of “Love The Way You Lie” with Tyler Ward — a hit that instantly went viral. She reached 100,000 subscribers quickly after that and kept going.

“That’s when it became a full-time 22

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thing,” she says. “Those first 70 or so videos I edited myself.”

Her first original song, “Beautiful,” was released in the spring of 2011. A month later she was being flown out to Miami to take a meeting with P. Diddy at his home. “They made us take off our shoes and put on complimentary slippers,” she laughs. Seventeen at the time, Megan already had a firm idea on what she was about and what she wanted. A week later, she was on a plane to New York to meet with P. Diddy and Jimmy Iovine and sign her deal with Bad Boy Records and Interscope Records. She was signed with them for a few years before becoming independent last year. Once her deal was over, she was finally able to release a body of work that showed who she was as an artist. Escape, her debut EP, was a longtime coming. She had worked on an album before she was signed and one while she was signed, but Escape was her first official release.

While it was all happening, Megan was frustrated to be working on music and never having her fans hear it.

But looking back on it now, she realizes it was just part of her journey. “A lot of the songs I’ve written recently reflect from that experience,” she says. “I think we have to go through certain situations in our life to grow as a person and to grow as an artist.”

The latest step in Megan’s journey has been into the acting world. She had secured an acting agent a few months back and was then presented with the opportunity to make a movie. Megan’s song “Summer Forever” ended up being the inspiration for the movie’s story (appropriately titled Summer Forever), which follows three best friends on their last weekend before college, as they try to cross off as many things as possible from their to-do list before starting school. Megan was involved in the entire process — from casting, writing songs for the film and more.

“It was really important to me to surround myself with seasoned actors,” she says. “I didn’t want this to be like, ‘Let’s get a lot of cool, social people together and make a movie.’

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I wanted it to be something special.”

Megan stars alongside Alyson Stoner, Ryan McCartan and Stephen Colletti.

“It was cool for me to be able to learn from them,” Megan says of the cast. She specifically cites Alyson — who plays Liv in the film — as someone who continually impressed her on set with her ability to dance, act and sing all in the same scene. Megan plays Sydney, a music-obsessed girl who sometimes forgets to experience the rest of the world. “Her social life is a little on hold,” Megan explains. “She has to find a cute guy to mingle with before the weekend is up.” She also confesses that Sydney is a little sarcastic at times, but definitely not as much as Liv. “The banter between Liv and Liam (Ryan McCartan) … a lot of it is ad-libbed,” she says. “And a lot of the ad-libbed scenes made the movie.” She thinks those moments made it in the movie because they were the most genuine moments caught on camera.

Megan says that she believes that Summer Forever is a film that a lot of people will be able to relate to because it touches on that awkward period of time between high school and the real world. She thinks it’s a feel-good film that all age groups can enjoy. “The first time I ever saw the movie was a rough screening with the executives and their kids, and I was more scared for the kids to see it!” Megan admits. The kids did like it, and most importantly they loved the songs in it, so now Megan is eager for people to see it when it hits iTunes Sept. 4.

Megan will be on tour through the rest of September and then will continue working on new music. Oct. 14 will be the one-year anniversary of Escape, and she’s ready to release a new body of work for her fans. Once she gets back to Los Angeles, she’ll be auditioning to try and advance her acting career. Eventually, Megan hopes to launch her own fashion line, but nothing is in the works with that yet.

So she may not be up in space counting stars from the moon, but down here on Earth, she’s well on her way to becoming a star of her own. NKD

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PAIGE SPARA Words by JORDAN MELENDREZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by BRENDAN ROBERTSON

You can tell by her rapid fire speech and bubbly personality that Paige Spara is elated.

It may have something to do with that fact that a co-worker sent her a letter saying he loves her — well, her character, Audrey.

This is where the audience finds themselves in the first episode of ABC Family’s Kevin From Work, a single-camera, workplace comedy. Kevin (Noah Reid) is prepared to move overseas to start a new job, and he figures he has nothing to lose, so he writes a letter to his cubicle mate Audrey (Paige), declaring his love for her. Obviously, things can’t work that simply; the job falls through, and Kevin finds himself back at the office. With Audrey. Cue the discomfort.

Kevin From Work, directed by Barbie Adler of Arrested Development and How I Met Your Mother, focuses on the awkward moments — the double-takes, the offbeat one-liners — and Paige loves every bit of it. The quirky characters, such as her roommate Patti (Punam Patel), Kevin’s sister Roxie (Jordan Hinson) and Kevin’s friend Brian (Matt Murray), make the moments between the dialogue, whether it’s a facial expression or gesture or something that you wouldn’t get from just listening to what they are saying. Sometimes the simple gestures are the most comical.

“It’s so hard to keep a straight face.

But this team, this cast’s so supportive, so collaborative,” Paige says. “I feel so safe because this is my first real TV acting job.”

Not only is Paige excited about landing the role, but she is also a boisterous person, and her life-long dream 26

has finally come true. Originally from Washington, Pa., about 30 minutes from Pittsburgh, the 25-year-old remembers quitting a lot of hobbies. Except for acting. She always knew she wanted to be an actress.

“I’m somewhat of an indecisive person,” she explains. “[Acting is] like the one thing I never questioned.”

While her family was supportive of her aspiration, they were reluctant to let her move to New York as soon as she graduated from high school, so she attended the Point Park Theatre Conservatory for two years before transferring to Marymount Manhattan College. After her senior project at Marymount Manhattan, Paige starred in a commercial for Forevermark Diamonds. It didn’t take long for talent manager Genevieve Penn to take notice and reach out to Paige

via her website (spelling errors and all).

Genevieve invited Paige to Los Angeles for a meeting, and the two immediately clicked.

“I just knew, it was just that feeling,” Paige recalls. “I’m very tunnel-visioned, and whatever ignites me I just go for it.

And she ignited me, and she just ignited all my dreams and where I saw myself.”

In the course of one week, Paige had packed her suitcases, found a subletter for her apartment in New York (where she still has some belongings in Harlem) and moved to L.A. After two years of constant auditioning, Paige was receiving good reviews and positive feedback, but wasn’t quite making the last round of booking a role. And then Kevin From Work showed up, and Paige said she knew the audition went well, even if she wasn’t the Audrey they wanted.

“That was the only audition I’ve ever walked out of not needing affirmation from a casting director, not needing affirmation from Genevieve and my agent,” she remembers. “But I was just able to just go in, look [the casting director] in the eye … It was like, it was such a high, and it was such a good feeling.”

And now a slough of obstacles confront Paige every day, whether it’s making her own decisions (which she admits, she is both indecisive and impulsive) or tackling the social media aspect of the show. ABC Family is known for its dramas and live-tweeting, and this comedy is no different. But Paige is still learning the ropes — and definition of a retweet.

“I don’t Twitter. I’m a little confused by it still, but I’m so excited to live-tweet about the show and actually interact,” she says. “It’s also epic in the same sense that I get to relate, because you know that when good things happen to you you’re like, ‘What just happened?’ … It goes by so quickly, and you just have to decompress that, so I’m really excited to do that through Twitter.”

But with the challenges comes the support of her cast members and crew — and the knowledge that she is becoming a more well-rounded actress.

“On our team, they are all so communicative. and just all about collaboration and ‘What do you think?’ and ‘What do you think of this character?’” Paige explains. “Which I’m so even more lucky to have, to be challenged, to have these conversations, to not just do what’s on the page but really do kind of find and sharpen it 10 notches up.”

Paige says she just got over the hump in her life of asking herself who she is, what she is doing — and why she asks herself all of these questions all the time.

But the show has really helped her grow into her own. She has made some strong decisions in the past, and she will undoubtedly make more in the future.

“It really sets that kind of relatable dialogue that you have in your head every day. You make that bold decision to better your life,” she says. “When I read the script, I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of like, ‘I need to get a little bold … maybe I should just pull a Kevin and see what happens.’

Her words to live by now: “Just pull a Kevin.”NKD NKDMAG.COM

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KATIE STEVENS Words by DUSTIN HEVERON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair by STEVEN MASON Make-Up by AGOSTINA Styling by MINKPINK, DRA CLOTHING, SILPADA

She sings. She acts. She writes.

She’s bicoastal. And she’s relatively normal.

“She” is Katie Stevens, and for anyone familiar with her overnight rise to prominence as a top-10 finisher on American Idol or her “faux-lesbian turned possible real lesbian cheating on her faux-girlfriend with a man” character on MTV’s hit show Faking It, “normal” might not be the first adjective that comes to mind. But Katie stands by her relative normalcy, and credits her parent and her upbringing for keeping her grounded with a good foundation, even while she portrays some of the most intriguing and unique characters onscreen and onstage.

“I grew up in Connecticut — I was always a creative, obnoxious child,” Katie shares. “My parents tried to get me into everything under the moon. I was doing sports even though I was crappy at them; I played soccer for 10 years. But I was always the little girl that was like picking daisies at the other end of the field.”

Luckily, Katie soon found something that piqued her interest more than 28

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soccer and daisy picking, by sheer happenstance. “My parents were signing us up for theater camps when [my brother and I] were younger,” Katie says, “not thinking we’d be interested in it, just thinking ‘They’re obnoxious and need somewhere to go.’” But the creative arts did interest Katie, who found herself drawn to them even when she wasn’t on a stage. “[I was] watching films and television when I was little and getting that little bite from performing and stuff — where my love from everything came,” she recalls. “I never thought there was any hope for me to actually go out and do anything.” Once Katie’s tendencies went from “obnoxious” to ambitious, her parents helped her pursue her dreams as best as they were able to. “I think when I was 12 was the first time I had actually sent anything to an agent,” Katie remembers.

“And my mom and my dad are like not in the [entertainment] industry at all so they were like, ‘Oh cool, you want to send things to agents … We don’t know any agents.’

My parents were just looking online at child agencies and sending things off.

We never really heard anything from that, so I stuck to just doing theatre in my town.”

It was right in that time of her life that Katie had a very abnormal day, which would lead to many more like it.

“American Idol auditions came up when I was 16,” Katie recounts, “And I got up in the middle of math class and I [auditioned] and from doing that my life was changed.” Katie recalls, “10,000 people, my mom was with me, and I looked around and was like, ‘There’s no way in hell I’m making this but this’ll be fun.’

So we did the audition and I happened to make it and I feel like [American] Idol is a right place, right time, and right person seeing you kind of thing, just like with anything else. I was passing tents where people were amazing and not getting through so I just felt really

lucky that I saw the right person and they wanted me.”

Being a “relatively normal” person can make for a difficult transition into the entertainment industry at any age, let alone as a teenager. But Katie knew what she wanted, and let her fusion of talent, ambition and determination make up for her lack of experience. “I had no idea anything about the industry, what I was getting into,” Katie says.

“I am a very, very determined person, and when I want something I’m the person that doesn’t give myself another option — it’s going to happen.”

And happen it did. Katie quickly found herself a fan favorite on a show whose very reputation was built on

es. “I worked at Sprinkles cupcakes, and I remember some of my friends who had done Idol were making good money from doing concerts related with Idol and they were like, “Why are you getting a job?’” Katie credits her parents for her strong work ethic. “My mom and dad are business people. My mom is super smart and actually wanted me to go to school and major in business so that if my dreams failed, that I would have something to fall back on,” Katie remembers. “When I was younger I thought my mom was annoying when she was trying to teach me business savvy, but now I’m like, ‘Oh it paid off in the long run,’ because I feel like I’ve gone about everything in a very smart way, just thanks to my upbringing.”

Failure wasn’t in the cards for Katie, though. She didn’t spend much time baking cupcakes before finding that her love of music and her first love, acting, went together better than Sprinkles’ red velvet cupcake and cream cheese frosting.

Katie wound up as a lead on MTV’s breakout pop culture hit, Faking It, where she portrays the decidedly anti-normal Karma Ashcroft, a character to whom she loves bringing her own layers of flavor. “Our writers on the show are so incredible in giving us the extra layers,” Katie reveals. “And it’s really great because the secrets that get revealed, a lot of times the writers will come to us and be like, ‘Hey it’s not going to happen for a while, but you have this secret, so we’re not going to tell anyone else in the cast, we just want you to know this.’ So it’s like everyone has their secrets, and we can’t tell them to our other cast members. So that’s really cool because we’re able to play those layers into whatever scripts we’re getting.”

Determined to a fault, Katie admits that she still digs for clues about the other characters. “I’m like the nosiest one of the cast, so I’m always going to the writers like, ‘What happens next?

Do you want to tell me?’” Katie con-

“It’s cool when we do Q&A’s and things like that to have young, teenage girls be like, ‘I relate so much to your character,’ ‘I see myself in your character.’” having a very difficult to impress fan base and judge panel. But Katie was still determined, and her next goal was to make sure that she was setting herself up for a career that lasted longer than a single season of a singing competition show. “It’s all such a wonderful family to be a part of, I’ll never say a bad word about American Idol. It got me to do what I wanted to do,” Katie acknowledges. “But I wanted to be known for more than that. I always will set goals for myself, and my goal was that I didn’t want to be one of the people on American Idol that was forgotten and it got too hard for them so they went back to doing what they were doing before.”

But building a sustainable post-Idol career is easier sang than done, which had newly minted starlet Katie once again looking to forge her own path, rather than just follow in the footsteps of her peers and predecessors. “I mustered up, and I got a job,” Katie divulg-

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fesses. But she appreciates that behind all the glitz and glamour, she’s able to be a role model to young women who look up to her character’s ability to go after what she wants. “It’s cool when we do Q&A’s and things like that to have young, teenage girls be like, ‘I relate so much to your character,’ ‘I see myself in your character,’” she says. “So that just makes me want to make it that much more authentic and real.”

Something very real about Katie: She doesn’t play favorites between music and acting. “Everyone always asks me which 36

one I prefer, which one I would rather do, and it’s like I can’t choose because the way that I feel when I write a song or sing a song is totally different than when I’m acting, and it’s cool because I feel like it’s an industry where you don’t have to choose,” Katie says. “We’re in a day and age where everyone does everything, and even back in like the ’40s and ’50s, people were singing and dancing and acting all together. No one had to choose. So I think it’s unfair that people put that kind of thing on people, saying you have to choose one. I’d rather be

seen for my artistry as a whole.”

That duality of interests and talents has split her between East and West Coasts, commuting back-and-forth from California to Tennessee. “The live music scene is amazing,” Katie says about Nashville. “I love to just go and sit down at like a local bar and just listen to different musicians play because I think it’s always inspiring to just view other people’s artistry that’s different from mine. And Nashville is just such a cool and awesome place. Everyone is so nice there.”

But Katie’s own artistry was percolating long before her move to Nashville. “I wrote my first song when I was in high school, and I was 13 and I had a crush on a boy,” she says. “When I write a song, I write this from personal experience — something I’ve been through that I’m sure a million other people have been through,” Katie shares.

She notes that the personal-connection element is a big motivator in all her artistic endeavors. “I always say I wanted to become an actor because I know watching a movie and watching someone’s performance makes you feel a certain way,” Katie explains.

“And then it kind of goes hand-inhand with why I love songwriting and why I love music, because when you’re feeling a certain way you want to listen to a certain kind of song,” Katie says.

“You want to hear someone talking about something about being like, ‘Holy shit, I went through that exact same thing.’”

With two careers, two cities, her dog (“My dog is maybe the main focal point of my Instagram,” Katie quips before whipping out her iPhone to show me a series of adorable pictures of her miniature golden doodle, Winnie the Pooch), and all her loved ones vying for her attention, Katie knows exactly what she likes to do with what little free time she gets: relax. “I like to say that I’m a grandma on my downtime,” Katie jokes.

“Because I get to do so many cool, active things with my job — which is awesome — I think when I have downtime, I prefer to stay at home and play Netflix or have friends over and have game nights.”

But for someone as motivated as Katie, sometimes even calling two cities home isn’t enough. “I like to travel a lot, too. I just went to Portugal with my family, because I’m Portuguese, so we went and visited my family over there,” she says. “I’m pretty simple and relatively low-key. I’m relatively normal. I think?”NKD NKDMAG.COM

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JOHANNA BRADDY Words by SHELBY CHARGIN Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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Hailing from a small town in Georgia, Johanna Braddy is your everyday kind-hearted southern sweetheart — sans the accent and small-town girl attitude. Her incredibly sharp demeanor and can-do attitude makes it hard to wipe the smile from your face when hearing her speak.

Johanna’s acting story starts at summer camp. “I always wanted to be an opera singer. I went to school a little early with a music major,” she recalls.

“And I had a manager from the movie Pop Rocks who said, ‘Why don’t you come out to New York and L.A.?’” At the young age of 18, after booking parts such as voice-acting for Avatar: The Last Airbender as Princess Yue and her first pilot season, she felt like “the door was opened and I should just walk through it.”

Her smooth introduction to acting was also very different. Having experience in voice-acting as her first major breakthrough, Johanna wouldn’t be closed off to doing it again. “I would love to do a cartoon again,” she says, reminiscing about how she would go into record, read lines back to back and even have voice coaches there to help. Her appreciation for it comes from the business that her life has become after having not one but two pilot series on TV. UNreal, a series based on reality dating shows like The Bachelor, has been taking over people’s Monday nights on Lifetime all summer and wrapped at the beginning of last month. Although the experience has been “so awesome” for her, she doesn’t see herself ever being able to do reality TV. “Never, and definitely not one about finding love; no.” On UNreal, Johanna plays the uptight and professional Anna Martin, and while she does relate to her character, it is her role as Shelby Wyatt on Quantico who challenges Johanna because Shelby is her exact opposite. “On

Quantico, Priyanka [Alex Parrish] jokes around about how we play opposite roles. Like I’m actually much more like her character in real life,” Johanna says.

“We were like, ‘We should do a short where we switch roles.’”

Johanna’s love of acting is what seems to push her professional attitude, and even from her early days on shows such as ABC Family’s Greek, Johanna was positive about every experience. “I loved working on Greek, and I had so much fun with it. It’s been awhile since the show,” she explains. “It’s definitely a shift going to play Anna and playing an older character.”

It takes a strong actress to openly admit to loving a more sinister side of things, especially given Johanna’s bubbly demeanor. “I love how dark it is,” she remarks, referencing her current roles and how much more grown up they are. Johanna has dabbled quite a bit in suspense and horror, after scoring the lead role in The Grudge series, acting in Paranormal Activity and now working on ABC’s Quantico. It doesn’t get too scary for her though. “On the set of Paranormal Activity, there was this scene where I was supposed to see the ghost, and then it disappears and I scream,” she recalls. “And it was literally just the director under a white sheet.”

While The Grudge, Paranormal Activity and Greek made Johanna a household name, having a show like Quantico, premiering this month, is a huge step forward for her. “You’re stepping into this well-oiled machine,” she states about working with a major network. “It’s been great. I’ve been training, I’ve been training a lot with guns, different firearms.”

Another perk of working with a major network is the resources; Johanna has access to FBI training. “We have consultants and FBI on set with us every day.

You can just go up to them and ask them anything you want,” she explains. “They can show you how to walk, to talk, hold a gun, they can show you everything, so I’ve never had that before.”

Her gushing over having that on set comes from a longtime goal of wanting to be on a show about the FBI. “I was an FBI agent for Halloween last year,” She laughs. “I have the fake badge and everything … I’ve been waiting for this role.”

And if her experience with TV and

voice weren’t enough to make the masses fall in love, Johanna even has three seasons of the web series Video Game High School under her belt. “It’s completely different,” she says of the filming process.

“It’s like making a movie with friends. It’s crazy, crazy hours … it’s much more fastpaced,” she says. “Each season is a film in basically 30 days, so it’s real quick.”

As exhausting as it was, Johanna loved doing it.

When examining her career — the variety and quantity of experiences — it’s hard to believe that she has time to do anything else. Even in her spare time, Johanna and her friends, who are also actors and industry professionals, go out and film shorts. “We do just like random stuff, like music videos, just a bunch of stuff,” she says.

Her dedication to acting is more than just a career; it’s who she is. “I mean

honestly, it’s my favorite thing to do; it really is.” But she’s quick to share one important fact: She loves salsa dancing.

“I love dancing, I go salsa dancing a lot,” she says. “I’m pretty simple; I’m not a partier … It’s a pretty different vibe than a regular club.”

Her goals for now are to focus on Quantico and to eventually get into some type of fantasy. When asked if she had a book she wanted turned into movie in the fantasy genre, Johanna says that her favorite book is Lord of the Rings. “I love the films, my dream was to be an elf in that,” she explains. “But there wasn’t really a spot for me I don’t think.”

Her dedication and hopefulness toward each new boundary she wants to cross in her career is a perfect way to showcase herself as the happy girl who loves what she does — and will continue to do — as long as she pursues acting. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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MCKALEY MILLER Words by JORDAN MELENDREZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by BIANCA DIMILLO Styling by DISTRICT

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When McKaley Miller was younger, she dreamed of being a professional dancer. “When I was about 2-years-old, my mom put me in dance class as a way to sort of get my energy out because I was such a crazy child. I danced from the time I was 2 to the time I was 13 and a lot of those years, I was a competitive dancer,” she says. She spent her free time making up dances with her friends and putting on shows for her family. She thought she had it all figured out, with a dream starting at a So You Think You Can Dance audition and ending on a Broadway stage.

However, she was in the fourth grade when she found a love for acting while

on a movie set. “My best friend’s dad was a director, and she asked me if I wanted to be an extra on set. I was like, ‘I don’t know what that means, but OK, sure.’ I went on set, and I just watched how everything happened. And there was another little girl that was cast in the film and [the extras] were hired to be her friends, and I was just watching and I was like, ‘Mom, she’s not saying that right. Wait, can I try to say the line?’

She was just watching me the whole time going, ‘Oh no, she’s caught the bug. Here we go,’” McKaley laughs. “And that was it. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

With no family in the business, McKaley’s mother searched for acting

classes in Dallas and stumbled upon Cathryn Sullivan, an acting coach to stars such as Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez, was only 15 minutes away from their house. After one class at Cathryn’s, McKaley was hooked. “I balanced acting and dance for about two years and then acting just sort of took over my life,” she explains. “And I had to make a choice and I chose this.”

Not long after, she was off to film ABC’s The Gates in Shreveport, La. “It was about vampires and witches and werewolves, and they all lived in this gated community, so it was like a dream job for me,” she says. Being only two hours away from her hometown was a NKDMAG.COM

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good first location for the new actress.

“I love getting to film stuff on location because it really forces the whole cast to bond. It’s not like you shoot in L.A. and everyone just goes home to their family and does their own thing,” she says. “When you’re on location, you’re stuck with these people, so it was such an amazing experience to be on a set with wonderful, wonderful actors and getting to learn from them and watch and as a 12 year old, just being a sponge and just soaking everything in.”

A year later, McKaley found herself working alongside Rachel Bilson on The CW’s Hart of Dixie. “I booked that as a series regular, and then Nancy Travis was supposed to play my mom and she left to do [Last Man Standing], so all of the story lines changed and everything got switched out. I became a recurring guest star, which was such a blessing in disguise because I got to go be a part of this family and I still got to work, but I still got to go do other amazing opportunities,” she says. McKaley also got to assist in deciding how her character would develop throughout the four seasons of the show. “One of the first things that I said when I went on the pilot was, ‘Hey, can Rose start out being super like smalltown girl and then as the seasons go, sort of dress more like [Rachel Bilson’s character] Zoe and sort of mimic the things that Zoe does?’” she recalls. “She starts out really geeky, I guess, and never really loses herself, but there are little bits of Zoe that Rose picks up on.”

As fans of the show can see, Zoe and Rose become similar toward the end, but in real life, McKaley found herself learning a lot from Rachel, too. “Growing up on a set and watching the way that she treats all of her crew and all of her cast and the directors, it was amazing for me to grow up and watch that and be like, ‘OK, this is how you run a show. This is how you do it correctly.’ Rachel is such a sweetheart. Everybody loves Rachel. The whole cast is so great,” she comments.

The experience she gained from Hart of Dixie and watching Rachel landed her in the biggest role of her career yet, and one of the fall’s most anticipated shows, Scream Queens. “Someone dies every episode, so it’s very unexpected and people are constantly dying, but it’s also OK to laugh,” she says of the plot.

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McKaley is no stranger to the horror genre. “My brother and I watch scary movies all the time. Over the summer, we’ll have scary movie marathons, so I pretty much have seen every scary movie there is to see,” she says. With a knowledge of all things creepy and haunted, there’s no doubt that McKaley will know exactly what to do in the new Fox show.

The show is a dark comedy put together by Ryan Murphy, the creator of American Horror Story and Glee. “It’s really like you mixed those two together minus the singing. It’s something that has never been done before,” McKaley says. She plays Sophia, and though her plot line takes place in flashbacks, she’s a vital character to the story.

When asked if she has a clue as to who will be the murderer, McKaley confessed that almost no one on the set is aware of the answer. “Jamie [Lee Curtis] doesn’t even know. Nobody knows who the killer is,” she says. “They’re super, super early into their season now, so who knows who is going to die next? Who knows who the killer is going to be? It’s super unexpected. I think it’s going to be all in the editing. They’re just going to figure it out then.”

She has no doubt that it will end up being incredible, since she is a huge fan of Ryan Murphy, as well as American Horror Story. “I got the call that I booked it, and it was honestly the coolest moment ever. I get to go work with Ryan Murphy. This is unreal,” she gushes. “He’s just so great, and he has such a unique eye, and the way that he envisions the scenes and the way that he shoots it is just so unique. It’s been really, really cool to work with him. It’s a completely different experience.”

With the likes of celebrities such as Nick Jonas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Grande and Emma Roberts as her costars, the show is sure to be a smash hit.

“Jamie Lee Curtis sat down with a few of the girls and me, and we just had just seen a screening of the pilot, and she was like, ‘I don’t even think we understand how great this is going to be,’” McKaley says. “Just the fact that a dark comedy like this has never really been done before, or I haven’t seen anything like this in a very long time. I think that’s what’s really going to draw in a lot of the audience.” NKD

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SAINTMOTEL Words by RYAN SLOAN | Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

If you attended this year’s Coachella, then the name Saint Motel will more than likely ring a bell. Known for their brilliantly creative live shows, the band wowed audiences, so it comes as no surprise that people left the festival talking.

“Coachella is our hometown festival and we wanted to do something special,” says frontman A/J Jackson. “We had a full piece horn section, six choreographed showgirl dancers on stage and Drake let us use his backdrop, so we had a huge LED stream that projected our artwork.”

For A/J (vocals/guitar), Aaron Sharp (guitar), Dak (bass) and Greg Erwin (drums), Saint Motel’s live shows are designed to be an experience for everyone.

The group will spend weeks and sometimes months planning each show before they ever even hit the stage. “We want to make it fun not just for the audience but for us, too,” A/J says. “We’re reaching in deep to create these subversive experiential type of shows that are different and hopefully something more cathartic and theatrical than what people are used too.”

This desire to combine striking visuals and retro dance numbers with dynamic indie rock can only be traced back to the band’s formation.

Saint Motel was conceived in 2009, when longtime friends and film school classmates A/J and Aaron, or “A Sharp,” decided to collaborate on a musical project. The two bonded over shared tastes in music — whether it was The Who or Talking Heads — and utilized their passion for obscurist cinema to create the exoskeleton for what would soon become a retro-futuristic brand of pop like no other. By the time Greg and Dak joined the mix, it was time to think of band names.

“We understood that a band name more times than not can define the music of that band. For instance, a band

name like Skull Brain Fish Crush is kind of like, ‘Oh, OK that’s going to be strange,” A/J jokes. “So after toying with roughly a thousand names, we got to Saint Motel. And it was like these two words that didn’t necessarily fit together but somehow balanced one another out. It just matched the dichotomy of everything we do, balancing things out, happier songs with darker lyrics. It’s that combination of lyrics and/or sounds that may not normally work that create the foundation of Saint Motel.”

The group moved quickly and released a six-song EP by the name of ForPlay and put their visual talents to use by adding cinematic elements to each performance. “We played in halfpipes, semi-trucks, a circus,’ pretty much anywhere we could. We created our own bizarre brand of experiential concerts like Zombie Proms, Kaleidoscopic Mind Explosions, Judgment Days, etcetera.”

A/J says. “We just wanted to do what we could to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, and give people some kind of big, crazy experience whenever they came to see us.” The EP gained considerable attention from the Wall Street Journal as well as landing a placement for “Dear Dictator” in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

Following the EP, the group released their first full-length titled Voyeur.

KCRW said Saint Motel “attacked it with gusto on Voyeur, adding dynamic touches to their rock-solid core of songwriting.” It was the type of album that was written with blood, sweat and tears. The group wrote the record in their rehearsal space in downtown Los Angeles, which A/J recalled as a “dark, dungeon-like rehearsal space.” Day in and day out, the band had to tap into their colorful imagination to infuse a world that sounded like where they wanted to be.

They succeeded.

By mid-2013, Saint Motel had built up a considerably large underground fan base in the United State. They took off for England with plans to release My Type, their latest EP, that August. After BBC announced via Twitter that the song “My Type” was destined for hit status, Saint Motel found themselves in the spotlight.

The same spotlight that has brought their infectious track “My Type” to not only the top 10 on alternative charts but also as the featured single on the Soundtrack to the summer blockbuster Paper Towns.

Entertainment Weekly heralded the single as a contender for “song of the summer.”

The music video, co-directed by A/J, has racked up more than 7 million views on YouTube. The group was also recently given the opportunity to perform on NBC’s Today, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS’s Late Late Show with James Corden.

With all of their recent success, the gentlemen of Saint Motel are deserving of a vacation. But according to A/J, the band is back in Los Angeles and ready to “jump back in” to work on their next full-length record. “We spent a lot of time on the road writing on a laptop, and now that we’re home, I’ve been literally living in my studio downtown,” A/J explains. “I turned everything on, and it was like, ‘Can you handle the power?”

Writing on the road, A/J says, is a completely different experience from writing in a studio. “It can feel a bit limiting with how much of an idea you can actually explore.”

As for their next full-length, A/J says it will be different because of all they have accomplished in the past few years.

“We got to see more of the world. We met new people, and we’ve been fortunate enough to see some incredible places. I think it’ll definitely be something that comes through in our new music,” A/J says. “It’s going to be theatrical, powerful, and the live shows will definitely connect with the theme of the album, whatever that ends up being.”

It’s clear that Saint Motel are still exploring and experimenting with their sound and options. While soul, jazz, R&B and funk music may have inspired elements of their sound, Saint Motel’s songwriting continues to blossom with a unique originality. NKD

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