Victoria Justice On ‘Naomi & Ely’s No Kiss List,’ Her Gaydar & Playing Opposite Her Boyfriend Pierson Fode [EXCLUSIVE]

The ‘no kiss list’ is a list of boys that Naomi and Ely come up with so that no guy can ever come between their friendship. So, whoever is on the 'no kiss list’ is completely off limits for both of them.

Naomi and Ely have grown up together their whole lives, you know. They live in the same apartment building in New York City, and it’s kind of always just him and her. They have a very close kind of relationship, and Naomi knows that Ely is gay, but at the same time – he's like her best friend and she loves him – but she's also kind of in love with him and doesn't really want to come to terms with the fact that he's never gonna love her in the same way. So, he's not living in this fantasy world.

No. I mean, I've never been in love with a gay guy. I can't say that I have. The only thing I can say is my mom was a hairdresser, and I grew up... When I was eight I started modeling and doing commercials, so I was constantly around gay men, and so I feel like my gaydar was very tuned in from a young age. So, I'm very quick to pick up on vibes like that. But, yeah, I didn't really have any personal experience to draw on.

The most enjoyable scene for me? Oh man, there were a lot of good scenes! I mean, all the scenes where Naomi and Ely, where you're first kind of like getting to know them and their relationship were really fun. And, you know, we're just walking around The Village, doing the things that these two best friends do. You know, we go dancing on the streets and just rolling around, and going to all our favorite vintage shops, and exploring – all that was really fun to film because we were actually...It was kind of guerrilla style. We were put in this like, in the middle of New York City, doing it, really full and kind of improv-ing and incorporating them into it, and that was a really good time. There were a lot of really good scenes, I don't know it’s hard to choose.

Well, we didn't know each other before we started filming the movie. Like, we had just met at the audition, and I had no idea who he was and he didn't really have any idea who I was. So, we just like, you know, we found out that we had both gotten the part. We met for sushi a couple times, and hung out. And it was just not anything romantic at all, like, we were just like, forming a friendship, and focusing on the characters and that sort of thing.

I think it was just part of the role for him. But I think he, I think he also did a really great job playing a gay character. I think he did a very good job of not making him a stereotypical kind of gay character. He definitely has a lot of layers and he definitely did like, the background work that he needed to do to, to like really get into Ely.

When you first meet Naomi, her life has been falling apart, and the only thing that's really stable for her is her friendship with Ely. That's like the only thing she can really count on, because her dad has just left her mom. He had an affair with the lesbian across the hall, who ends up being Ely's mom, and her mom's falling apart as well, so she doesn't really have that support there. Money is also an issue, so everything has been just kind of like crumbling. And, she's a freshman at college, starting to go to school at NYU, and Ely and her have always been through everything together. And they don't really break out, they don't have really any other friends. They have these rules: They don't go above 14th street... Ely is breaking them and sort of becoming more of his own person, and that really sort of freaks Naomi out. Of course, the fact, he ends up falling in love with her boyfriend...