Chloe Guidry (‘Under the Bridge’) on how Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough ‘were both such genuine and comforting people’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Sixteen-year-old Chloe Guidry (who turns 17 in June) caught the acting bug when she was six and has been working off and on professionally ever since while at the same time attending regular school as a (mostly) full-time student in her native Crowley, Louisiana (population 11,373 at last count). But her work in the eight-part Hulu true crime limited series “Under the Bridge” that premiered April 17 was a decidedly different experience for her, marking the first time she was involved in a project shooting outside the country (in this case, Canada) and having to attend high school online for five months.

“It’s definitely been the most growing experience for me,” she emphasizes. “Going to a different country is really hard to do, especially when it’s your first time. It can be so lonely.” But she loved the experience of “getting to step into someone else’s shoes and experience someone else’s life. I love the psychological aspect of it and I love studying it.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

In this case, the shoes that Guidry was obliged to step into were some fascinating and somewhat frightening ones. She portrayed the real-life protagonist Josephine Bell, an emotionally damaged, bullying sociopath who participates in the 1997 murder of Reena Virk, a 14-year-old Canadian girl in British Columbia whose South Asian roots led to her being discriminated against, targeted and ultimately killed. Bell is one of the bully leaders of the group, a casualty of the foster care system who – in Guidry’s extraordinary performance – exhibits a casual sense of cruelty and menace that’s positively chilling.

Guidry says she spent long hours researching the case, in part by reading the 2005 book by the late Rebecca Godfrey from which the series is adapted. “Josephine is such a layered and complex character,” she explains, “and I wanted to have a good understanding of every single aspect of her. We had a lot of rehearsals before we started shooting and ha a lot of versions of (the character) that we came up with. I really wanted to know why these kids did the things that they did and why this murder happened, and I feel like Jo definitely had a huge (part) in it.” Josephine, Guidry maintains, was led astray by her lack of parental involvement in her life and the fact “she wanted to not have any adult telling her what to do. She took out her anger in violence on people who didn’t deserve it like Reena. She saw the love and care that Reena’s family gave to her that she didn’t have, and she wanted to betray that.” At the same time, “she didn’t think that someone would die from it,” she adds.

As she finishes up her junior year of high school, Guidry is philosophical about her own experience from middle school up to the present. “It’s such a growing period,” she notes. “You have a lot of people trying to find out who they are. And in middle school, girls can be mean, boys can be mean, everybody can be mean.” Unlike Josephine, Guidry is grateful to have a strong support system while spending her childhood and adolescence pursuing acting (which she plans to make her career). “My mom has been with me through every single thing that I’ve gone through and I’m so thankful to her,” she stresses. “There are fundamental parts of high school and family and teen things (that I’ve missed out on), but you just sacrifice because you love the business and you have a passion for acting. It’s all worth it because you know that your hard work is going to pay off one day and all the rejection that you go through, it helps you grow as a person.”

“Under the Bridge” co-stars Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone and Emmy nominee Riley Keough, and Guidry is grateful to have had an opportunity to work with each of them. “They were just such genuine and comforting people,” she says. They presented “such a welcome space that you could really just click on your character and lock in. And besides that, they were just such kind people to work with.”

“Under the Bridge” rolls out a new episode on Hulu each Wednesday through May 29.

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