Zoey Deutch On ‘Vampire Academy,’ Lucy Fry

Well, I drove down [L.A.'s] La Cienega [Blvd.], and then I got to the building and I auditioned and then I got a call back and then I got another call back and then I screen tested and then I got the part. It was - yeah.

I had definitely heard about them, but I hadn'€™t read them. I was previously in another YA [young-adult] book to movie adaptation called Beautiful Creatures, so I was kind of in that world where people are talking about all their... what do they call their ships when they 'ship' people together I guess... it's when they really like people together. I sound like a grandma right now, 'What'™s that thing the kids are saying now a days.'€™ But yeah, I had an idea about it.

I think, I just spoke to somebody who had seen it. And she, her first instinct about describing it, was that it didn'€™t feel necessarily like a vampire film. It felt more like a story about a friendship between two girls and their survival. Just literally beyond even just trying to get through the mean girls and the boys and each other. They have these actually threatening forces surrounding them.

I think the thing that resonated the most to me was, and what I really appreciated about the story, was that it is about, I'm going to reiterate myself a bit and sound redundant, but it's a story of friendship between two girls which is rare, unfortunately and about them prioritizing each other over a relationship with a guy.

[Shakes her head no] But the relationship that they have between each other is that they don'€™t have anyone but one another. The movie actually begins with the audience seeing that Lissa'€™s parents and brother were killed in a car crash, and Rose was in the car and survived it, as well as Lissa, obviously. And Rose comes from a really screwed-up family where she doesn't talk to them, she doesn'€™t know them. She doesn'€™t know her dad and she barely talks to her mother, so they really have each other and this school. And this school they have to leave and they don'€™t even remember why, so that'€™s it, that'€™s all they have.

It was really fun. It'€™s awesome. I had full-time trainers and professionals teaching you how to defend yourself. It'€™s amazing. It was an awesome life experience that I probably never would have done or could afford -€” that kind of stuff is so expensive -€” but I trained for about three months prior, I think, three months. It's all a blur. I was too exhausted and sore and in Epsom salt baths. I don'€™t know how Mark Wahlberg does it. I have no idea. Or all those guys, I have no idea. I could not do that every movie. And I trained throughout the filming and during my lunch breaks and yup. It was definitely a new experience to me because I had never even been in a gym.

My character has never been done before. Ever. One hundred percent has never been done before. That'€™s a fact. I can say that. I can'€™t necessarily vouch for like, '€˜Is this the only funny non-parody of vampire film?'€™ I don'™t know. But it is. It'€™s very humorous. It has a lot of jokes and a lot of, embedded into the story without kind of taking you out of it in my opinion at least. It's just like constantly strewn throughout the story.