AB: 13 Reasons Why is a great show that gives young actors the platform to actually act. We play well-rounded characters with real problems that are important and very relevant in today’s society, and I’ve learned so much about sexual assault and mental illness, it’s been an educating process for me. How does it feel for you?
BF: I mean, when I read the script I was like, “Fuck, these characters – I can taste them, I can smell them.” They are just so three-dimensional and that has always really attracted me to the project. I didn’t really think about what the show was saying until we started working on it, working with these doctors like Dr Hu, who is amazing, she is one of the people who was on board the whole time advising the show. They worked with different doctors and psychiatrists, people who dealt with suicide, a lot of problems that are very common. I had friends who dealt with depression, and I’ve recently had a few different friends taking their lives. This show’s been really important in multiple ways. I get to work with people who are really fucking acting and writers and directors who just want to make a difference.

AB: People always ask us, “Did you know that the story was going to be that big?” and honestly the feeling I had while filming the first season, I’m never going to have that feeling again.
BF: Yeah.

AB: It was a group of actors, a group of creators and producers literally just there for the same reason and the set felt like a family. Every day was magnetic, because we were there serving this same purpose. And especially after the show came out, I realised how big of a deal it really was, because it touched so many people’s lives. A lot of people that I’ve personally met have genuinely said that this show saved their lives, or this show really gave them the courage to say something about what happened to them. I know that you use your voice a lot for that.
BF: I think a lot of the people on board really have found this beautiful relationship with social media and with viewers, bringing awareness. That’s important to me because when the show blew up, I started having all these followers and all this attention – people would ask, “How has your life changed?” And I’ve said, “Well for one, I’ve managed to somehow change other people’s lives.” I think that’s really big and really important. Honestly, that feeling and that responsibility is something I’m always going to try and navigate because it’s a weird one. Trying to do that and being that kind of person who has a voice, I stay up at night thinking if I’d make a good parent. Because how do you tell people what to do?

AB: Exactly.
BF: It’s something at 24 I never thought I’d be grappling with, but people really do pay attention, they look up to what you give to the world and that is really special. I’ve always wanted to give to the world, just like my friends gave so much to me. Some of my biggest idols are my friends.

AB: Who do you look up to?
BF: Definitely my friend Jean Louis, he’s like this creature who I met in high school who was so open and willing to love, but as an artist has always been this expressive, no fucks-given kind of creator. He makes his own work, and to me, anyone who does that is a fucking genius. Like musicians, those guys just create all this music, meanwhile as an actor I’m just waiting for someone to write something for me [laughs]. Which is also changing, I’m working on a couple of projects right now, and that too is a process.

AB: Definitely, I feel like this has been the craziest year for us. We started as actors wondering if we were going to get a job, and now we’ve been kind of thrown into fame, which we don’t really know how to grapple with. Especially social media, it’s hard to deal with, it’s hard to find your place in the world. To remind yourself of what you love to do, and what you stand for. I think you have a very clear position in that, which is good. I’m glad we didn’t get lost in it. So what’s your favourite book
BF: Ooh… what is my favourite book?

AB: The Prophet, come on.
BF: Yeah it probably is The Prophet honestly.

AB: Right?
BF: It’s such a beautiful book, it’s oddly biblical.

AB: Yeah I started reading The Prophet and I brought another one by Kahlil Gibran, it was about love and other poems.
BF: Yeah, he’s got a couple.

AB: It is very biblical.
BF: Well he’s definitely a believer in god, which I think is interesting. Maybe I don’t believe in god per-se, but I believe in something, and it’s kind of beautiful to hear someone talk about it as an expression of love. Sometimes I feel like, even though we say there is a separation of church and state in our country and in our politics, it’s still so
evident. You know, here we are with number 45 in office and things are kind of going to
shit. But I feel like Kahlil Gibran has this wonderful balance, he talks about faith and
belief, and he talks about what it means to be humans amongst humans. I read that book so often, I bought it once in Ireland and decided to make it a point to buy it in every city. It’s just a special book, it’s a lot of special words put together in a way that is beautiful and poetic and 100 percent makes sense.

AB: Yeah, you could go back to that book at any moment and it will relate to how you’re feeling right then.
BF: Growing up I really loved The Catcher in the Rye. I think that book is such a piece of work, I read it at a time when I was feeling lost. In my youth I felt lost a lot. There were a lot of issues in my life that I think every young person deals with, even at 24 I’m still dealing with things. You know, when you think, “Why am I like this, why do I do these things?” At a young age I felt very alienated by those thoughts, and alienated by who I was.

AB: What helped you through that?
BF: Honestly I’m still trying to figure it out, I think I was very self-sabotaging for a while, and I was always interested in altering my brain and altering myself, being under the influence. I think recently I’m realising more and more that that’s not safe and that’s not where clarity comes from. Realising that there is this big duality in life with every person – you can’t always be happy and you won’t always be sad, you can’t always love and sometimes you hate – is beautiful. Fighting for peace within all those feelings and trying to understand them, and why and when they happen. You’ll never have clear answers I don’t think, but to always try to search for light in darkness is what helps the most.

AB: Wow, ok that was beautiful. It’s very true though, I feel like some of the happiest people have gone through a lot of pain – the happiness is something that you’re grateful for every day.
BF: There’s beauty in our tragedy, there’s beauty everywhere.

AB: I feel the most creative when I’m going through something, you just learn so much about yourself and it’s incredibly important to feel those feelings and not to be afraid of them, and not to suppress them by doing a bunch of drugs or alcohol, or with unhealthy habits. You also have to remember that there is going to be light coming at the end…
BF: Yes always. So what are your favourite books?

AB: My favourite books? Well, you said you hated this book… it’s The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I read it when I was fifteen and I was very lonely as an early teen. I just felt like nobody understood me. I had a wonderful group of best friends, but I had a rough childhood and I just didn’t know how to express my feelings. I didn’t understand them at all because I had no one and I didn’t feel safe talking to anyone about them. So my escapism was through movies and books, and not TV shows because it wasn’t as easy to watch back then. Back then! It was five years ago… But still I remember reading The Awakening and it was the first book that made me cry, I remember finishing the last page and I sat there in my bed and just cried because it was such a beautiful, tragic story to me. It spoke to me growing up, discovering all of these feelings of being a girl and being misunderstood, and having so much inside of you that you want to express but other things are telling you that you can’t. But you do have the power within you. So that book is really, really special to me.
BF: I remember The BFG was the first book I cried at.

AB: Really? The BFG?
BF: Yeah and then I read it like ten times. I became so obsessed with it.

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