Hunter King plays the mean queen bee of the high school’s popular crowd in Amy S. Weber‘s indie feature A Girl Like Her.

Hunter King On ‘A Girl Like Her’

A Girl Like Her, filmed documentary-style, follows high schooler Jessica Burns (Lexi Ainsworth) as she collects footage of the bullying she’s enduring at the hands of King’s character, Avery Keller.

“Avery Keller is your typical popular girl in high school – a lot of friends, hangs out with her click,” King told uInterview in an exclusive interview. “People assume that is what she is, that she’s just a mean person, a mean girl. As you start to peel back the layers, you find out that there is a lot more to my character, Avery.”

While Keller is the bully in A Girl Like Her, in her real high school experience, King was the bullied – in much the same way many teenage girls are bullied, the actress points out. “We all deal with, every girl probably deals with, the mean girls in high school,” King explained.

“One of the incidences when I was in high school – it’s so embarrassing – but I was on the cheerleading squad and the whole varsity football team had a really mean nickname for me that was really inappropriate and really rude,” King said of her high school bullying experience. “And I would walk back to the bus after an away game and they would all just start shouting it out at me. And being 16, 17, the last thing you want is the varsity football team making up mean nicknames about you.”

King, who used that traumatizing experience as inspiration in A Girl Like Her, hopes that the exposure of the film will give her the opportunity to be a leader in the fight against bullying.

“I’m hoping to be able to talk to a lot of girls that are being bullied and kind of give them hope and tell them what to learn from this situation and what you should do if you’re being bullied,” said the 21-year-old. “And then, speak to the girls who are the bullies and try to figure out why they are acting the way that they are so that we can put a stop to it.”

A Girl Like Her is currently in limited release.

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Q: What is your character facing at the outset of the film? -

Well, my character Avery Keller is your typical popular girl in high school – a lot of friends, hangs out with her click. But as you see a little bit into the movie, she is kind of the mean girl. People assume that is what she is, that she’s just a mean person, a mean girl. As you start to peel back the layers, you find out that there is a lot more to my character Avery.

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Q: How was working on the film different from your previous projects? -

This film was filmed in a documentary style, meaning that there was a lot of go-pro cameras that were used to look like a hidden camera, and confessional cameras. Like, I was holding a video camera and kind of doing diary entries on that. So, it was kind of weird, you know, there’s someone wearing a huge go-pro strapped to their chest that’s supposed to be like a little pin. To not want to look straight at the camera and be like, “Oh what’s that?” It was different, but it was a really cool way to film this movie.

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Q: Were you ever bullied? -

I was bullied myself a little bit in high school, so I took this role very seriously. And it really means a lot to me, this film, because I’m hoping to be able to talk to a lot of girls that are being bullied and kind of give them hope and tell them what to learn from this situation and what you should do if you’re being bullied. And then, speak to the girls who are the bullies and try to figure out why they are acting the way that they are so that we can put a stop to it.

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Q: What were your encounters with bullying like? -

I mean, we all deal with, every girl probably deals with, the mean girls in high school. One of the incidences when I was in high school – it’s so embarrassing – but I was on the cheerleading squad and the whole varsity football team had a really mean nickname for me that was really inappropriate and really rude and I would walk back to the bus after an away game and they would all just start shouting it out at me. And being 16, 17, the last thing you want is the varsity football team making up mean nicknames about you. So it was kind of traumatizing and something that I was, you know, something that I remember, you never forget those types of things. And I used that as inspiration for the film.