Beanie Feldstein is following stay-at-home orders at her parents’ house in Los Angeles.
When she’s not watching “Ozark,” she’s hanging out with the family’s 90-pound English bulldog Jackie or Zoom-ing with friends.
“We’ve been doing some trivia in my friend group,” Feldstein says on Thursday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.” “Two people have to come up with a quiz and then we all take it — and you have to show up in costume — and then the losing teams have to donate to the charity of the game masters’ choice.”
“It’s like nice to see all your friends, and to have an activity, and have it be fun,” she continues. “And then it’s always like, whenever we’re losing, we’re like, ‘But then we get to give to charity.’ It’s great. It’s all good losing methods because you’re like, ‘But I want to give them money, so I want to lose.’”
It’s not surprise that Feldstein has found a way to turn losing into a positive. She’s able to find light where most people are bemoaning life in quarantine.
After earning a Golden Globe for her work in last year’s “Booksmart,” Feldstein can now be seen in “How to Build a Girl.” The coming-of-age film also marks her first solo leading role.
Feldstein stars in the film, based on Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, as Johanna, a teenager from a working-class family in Wolverhampton, England, who becomes a celebrated rock critic.
To nail the area’s very specific dialect, director Coky Giedroyc asked Feldstein to move to Wolverhampton and work in a local gift shop. “The women I worked with in this shop were so giving to me, and also really hard on me. They were like, ‘Nope, that was wrong. Try again,’ which I was so appreciative of,” Feldstein recalled. “And I loved the experience, because I’ve never done so much research and prep — both, at my desk reading about it, but also getting to go and live it, live that preparatory experience, which was really fun for me, and a brand new experience for me.”
Feldstein describes the book and the film as a “true coming-of-age story.”
“What I love so much about the film, and what I really connected to when I read it for the first time was, I think Caitlin, in her writing, and then in the film now, she really gives people of all ages, all genders, all sexualities, et cetera, permission to make mistakes, and try again, and not feel like their mistakes have to define them, but they just fold into the tapestry of who they are,” Feldstein said. “I just was so moved by that.”
You can hear the full interview with Feldstein below. You can also find “The Big Ticket” on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.