We sat down with one of the lead stars of Sweet/Vicious, Eliza Bennett, to talk about what we can expect from MTV’s new dark comedy.

We’ve been talking about Sweet/Vicious non-stop since we first said you should be paying attention to this show.

Since then, we’ve gotten a trailer, and the first three episodes of the series’ freshman run have landed online. We also had a chat with the show’s creator about what’s to come on the series, and now we’re speaking with on of the leading ladies.

Interview with Eliza Bennett, who plays Jules on ‘Sweet/Vicious’

What about the concept of ‘Sweet/Vicious’ initially drew you to the show?

The show is a mashup of so many genres, that I don’t think that’s done very often. Shows are so often pigeonholed into being one thing. You have to be comedy or you have to be a drama that’s incredibly harrowing. Our show encompasses so many genres. One minute you’re gasping and the next minute you’re laughing, and how Jenn treads that line is a mystery to me. But I read the script and I was like, “This would be the most amazing show to be a part of.” I feel like it’s talking about an incredibly real topic. It’s wonderful to be part of a show that you think is well-written and is great, and then it’s another thing to be a part of a show that you think can do some good and can be a part of a conversation that is long overdue.

What did you use for inspiration for your character, whether it was reading comics or listening to certain music? Were you given anything, specifically from the creator or the writers, or did you come up with any materials on your own?

The music in Sweet/Vicious is pretty awesome, and Jenn is a massive part of that. She has a huge playlist on Spotify that she’s put together over a long period of time. Very often when we were filming, she would be like, “This is the song I want to use over this scene. Do you want to listen to it?” And I’d be like, “Yes, 100%.” You would listen to the music and it would just transport you to exactly the place that you emotionally needed to be for that scene. Music is such a powerful tool to use, and really it has an identity of its own on the show. Music was a big part of getting the vibe of the show and getting where Jules is in her story. On the flip side of that, before we even started the show, it was doing a lot of research into sororities and fraternities, and then mainly also being as equipped as I possibly could to tell a sexual assault survivor story. I read Missoula by Jon Krakauer, and I read a lot of books and watched Hunting Ground and documentaries, and I spoke to a lot of survivors, which was probably the most difficult part of it. Everyone’s journey is different, but the trauma seems very familiar in a lot of stories. That’s kind of the two sides to the question of what I did: before, in preparation, and also what helped when we were actually filming the show.

Sexual assault is obviously a main topic of discussion for this show, but there actually are a lot of other themes prevalent as well. Which ones are you most excited for the viewers to discover so they can gather that information and discuss it and make it a topic that people are talking about?

Obviously when we’re promoting the show, a lot of our promos show the very kickass, vigilante [style against] sexual assault offenders. Jules and Ophelia taking down rapists is what the promos show, but I’m really excited for, when people unpack the show, that Jules and Ophelia are tackling injustices in general that are happening. We have an episode that concentrates on girls that Jules and Ophelia feel are sexually assaulting other girls when they’re hazing their pledges. I’m excited for people to see that because I feel that many girls have had experiences of bullying by other women on university, and I am glad that we’re telling that story, too. But there are so many themes. There are race issues on campus. It wasn’t like, “We should put this in and this in.” It was like, “Well, these are happening, so of course they should be in the show.”

What have you personally taken away from working on a show like this?

Sadly, I feel I was quite oblivious to what was going on before this show, and it has most definitely opened my eyes to some horrific things that are happening to a much greater magnitude of people than I ever could’ve imagined. Just starting the show, I’ve had multiple close friends come to me and say they’ve been sexually assaulted. You reach into your own life as well, and I think every woman I’ve spoken to of my friends have all had experiences of being assaulted in some way. Not necessarily to the point of rape, but every woman has to clutch their keys when they walk back to their car at night. There’s loads of areas even in my own life I’ve kind of written off as a grey area. Like, “Oh, that was a weird night, and that was an uncomfortable moment,” and it’s definitely been about having to own those moments for what they are, and being like, “No, that was sexual assault, and that wasn’t okay.” I need to accept that for what it was and then move on from it. A lot of my friends, just from me doing this show, we’ve had all these incredible conversations, and a lot of them have talked about things that they’ve never talked about before. I feel like with a survivor’s journey, so often society thinks [the victim] should be dealing with it the next day, and, “Why didn’t you do this and why didn’t you scream more and why didn’t you report it right away?” We’re just so uneducated about what trauma does and what a survivor’s journey is. It can be a long one before people are able to truly heal. So, for me, on a personal level, just with my friends, it’s been an amazing emotional journey and has strengthened many of my friendships. And I’m just proud of the way we’ve told it with Jules as well. I hope that a lot of girls can watch it and feel that they are less alone because we are showing a story similar to theirs, maybe.

If you had to pin down your character’s greatest strength and greatest weakness, what would they be?

Oh, I haven’t been asked that before! Her greatest strength is that she’s a fighter and a survivor. She’s a fighter for justice, and rolled in with her being a fighter for justice is the fact that she’s incredibly empathetic. She’s fighting a lot of other people’s battles. I think she’s awesome. Jules is the best. But alongside that, what’s her greatest weakness? She has a lot of weaknesses, as we all do as human beings. She tries to carry too much on her own shoulders. In that way she’s a little bit stubborn. She would rather do it on her own than someone else be involved. Ophelia definitely shakes it up for her and makes her feel incredibly uncomfortable for a while, but it soon becomes the best thing that ever happens to Jules because she has a partner, someone to lean on. But yeah, I would say she probably is stubborn, and she is a control freak and wants to do it all on her own. But that’s where the beauty of the story lies because it’s this unlikely duo that gets mashed up together. That’s where a lot of the comedy lies.

Going into production, what was your biggest source of concern and also your biggest source of excitement?

I was excited to be a vigilante. I had never done that before. I was excited to do fight scenes. We did fight training for the show. Taylor and I just had the best time. We did a month’s fight training before we started. We just loved that. Doing the fight scenes was a blast because our stunt team was amazing and I just loved working with them and the choreography was cool. Those parts don’t come along often for a woman, and I hope that changes soon, but I don’t take for granted how lucky I am to be a woman playing a part like this. The biggest concern was that I definitely felt the weight of the story we were telling, and I felt a responsibility to tell it right. But on the flip side of that, our creative team, with Jenn as our creator and Amanda Lasher as our showrunner, I never felt more supported on any job I’ve ever done. I knew there were difficult scenes coming up, and sometimes there were weeks of shooting that were very draining emotionally, but saying that, I don’t think anything ever felt too overwhelming because I was part of a cast and crew that was just amazing. It was always collaborative and always a conversation. I don’t think I ever felt alone in that journey or overwhelmed in any way.

Speaking of the stunt work, what was your biggest challenge there and was there anything that came very easy to you?

I used to dance, so choreography wise, I found that was the easiest. They were like, “Hook, cross, weave, and then you get pushed here.” The choreography I found quite easy to remember. But before the show, Taylor and I had no idea what we were doing at all. Also, there’s a big challenge getting flexible. I think I’ve lost a lot of my flexibility from when I was younger, and a lot of doing martial arts is doing high kicks and things like that. You have to have a certain level of flexibility to even get your leg up there to begin with. There was a lot of being in very painful positions with my stunt trainer putting one foot on our backs to hold us down in that position and being in a lot of pain the next day.

Back at NYCC, you were talking about your friendship with Taylor. Can you talk a little bit more about what it was like getting into the groove of the show and forming those on-set friendships?

Taylor and I were very lucky. I’m actually at her house right now. We were so lucky because it does not always happen this way. It’s not that you wouldn’t get on with a co-star, but Taylor and I…our bond was immediate and I don’t think we spent a day apart after we met each other. I think that massively plays into Jules and Ophelia. Although I’m not as similar to my character as Taylor is, our relationship is not too dissimilar from Jules and Ophelia’s. We met on our screen test, and we had a moment when we said goodbye to each other where we hugged and I said to her, “If it’s me, I hope it’s you.” We didn’t know if any of us had been cast. Then five minutes later we both found out that we got cast, and our journey began. But she’s amazing and a fearless actress, which has been an honor to work against. We hang out on the weekends. We played this quiz once where it was like, “How well do you know [your spouse]?” She beat all of my friends that I had known for two to six years, and she had known me six months. She won by a landslide. It was ridiculous. It was a very fast love for Taylor and I, and in L.A. we’re kind of like an old married couple now.

How does this set differ from other ones you’ve been on before, either in terms of the atmosphere or the fact that it does have such a high amount of female writers and people working behind the cameras?

I worked on a show once that was the opposite of Sweet/Vicious. It was all men. I never really felt uncomfortable about being a woman on set; I’ve been very lucky growing up that I never felt that, and it was the first time that I was like, “Oh, I feel at a disadvantage, and I feel that I have to prove myself to be here.” Even though I’d already gotten the part. I remember when we were doing the pilot on Sweet/Vicious, we were sat around, and we had three female exec producers, a female producer, our showrunner, our creator, and our director were all women. We found out afterwards that’s the first time that’s ever happened in television, that all those people had been female. I’ve never worked with a team that worked so well together. They’re feisty and creatively amazing and opinionated and it’s just so collaborative. It’s a loving environment to be around, and it feeds into the work. It makes our work so much easier, especially when you’re shooting fast and you don’t have that much time. When all that stuff is sorted, it makes a massive difference.

Do you have a preference as to which scenes you like to shoot the most, either the action sequences, the emotional moments, or the comedy?

I think the reason I joined the show was that I got to do all of it. I think if I was doing one of them all the time, it would probably become draining. And on a lot of other shows, you are doing one of those things all the time. My favorite things is that I’ll be like, “Ah, Wednesday, we have a fight scene, and oh, Thursday, we’re really dealing with that heavy content. Oh, Friday, Taylor and I have that scene where she vomits down her shirt.” It’s the best. I look at my schedule every week and I’m like, “Oh I have so much fun stuff to do this week. And all of them gratifying. People always asked when I was a kid, “What sort of actress do you want to be? Do you want to do comedy, do you want to do [drama]? I used to never be able to answer that question because I didn’t feel like I did just want to do one thing. So I was so chuffed when Sweet/vicious came into my life because there’s never a dull day and I’m never doing the same thing twice.

Do you have a favorite scene or episode, something that really turns the tide for Jules?

Episodes 6 and 7, I’m excited for people to see. We really dig into Jules’ story. I don’t think we dig into the story until Jules is ready to tell it, which I love. I feel like it happens very organically. Things take a turn for Jules, and I think she’s been putting a band-aid over her trauma for a long time and then channeling it into being a vigilante. She reaches a point where she has to take the band-aid off and deal with what happened to her. It’s not a quick fix. Those episodes were my favorite to read, and from what I’ve seen of the show, they’re some of my favorite episodes, too.

‘Sweet/Vicious’ debuts Tuesday, November 15 at 10:00 p.m. on MTV after ‘Teen Wolf‘