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‘I always hate being at all picky,’ whispers Kaitlyn Dever politely when the waiter at Hollywood institution, Chateau Marmont, takes down her order of a breakfast sandwich, without the avocado, minutes after the menu has switched to lunchtime.
When it comes to her career, however, such pickiness has paid off very well indeed. A year ago the 23-year-old was just another jobbing actress in Los Angeles. Then came the summer 2019 release of Booksmart, the critically acclaimed coming-of-age comedy that redefined everything a teen sleepover film could be. Here was a slick, witty, balls-to-the-wall funny (but importantly, female-led) story, breaking the mould set by the likes of American Pie, but without the girl vs girl in-fighting of Clueless before it. Overnight, Dever became an LGBTQ icon for her smart and thoughtful portrayal of queer teenager Amy and her relatable friendship with best pal, Molly (played by equally exciting rising star Beanie Feldstein of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird fame).
But it’s not just Booksmart that has put Dever on the map. Her lead role in Netflix’s Unbelievable, an eight-part series telling the true story of Marie Adler, a teenager charged with lying about being raped, has garnered equal levels of admiration (and was watched by an incredible 32 million households in its first 28 days) since it dropped on the viewing platform in September. That a relative unknown could pull off both roles with the aplomb of a seasoned film star is testament to Dever’s extraordinary talent and range.
It’s how Dever, proudly accompanied by her parents and younger sister, found herself at this year’s Golden Globes and nominated in the category of Best Actress in a Miniseries for Unbelievable. By the time she’d left the ceremony, wearing a scene-stealing Valentino Couture gown (chosen by Hollywood super stylist Karla Welch), she’d received gushing compliments from Margot Robbie, Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Hanks. The latter didn’t merely stop to tell her, ‘great job’. He placed the Golden Globe he’d just won into her hands and said: ‘You’ve got to get used to it, because you’re going to be holding one soon.’
Dever didn’t take an award home that night and it’s probably just as well. When the winner (Michelle Williams for Fosse/Verdon) was announced, Dever turned to her fellow nominee, Joey King (nominated for The Act) and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We literally just looked at each other and went, “Thank god”. We did not want to go up there!’ she laughs, removing her black leather jacket to reveal a Wallows T-shirt (her friend’s band) tucked into ripped jeans.
‘We were just too nervous. We were like, [adopts pathetic voice] “We’re just happy to be here.”’ Next time she might not be so lucky. At the Baftas on 2 February, Dever is up for the Rising Star Award that has, in previous years, honoured James McAvoy, Kristen Stewart and John Boyega.
Dever’s moment in the spotlight has been a long time coming. She has been working since she was 13, best known in the States for her recurring guest role as Loretta McCready in US crime drama Justified (2011-2015) and as scholarly daughter Eve Baxter in family sitcom Last Man Standing (2011-present). But she knows a good script when she sees one. It’s why she attached herself to the part of Amy in Booksmart five years ago. The script was in fact first written in 2009 when Dever was 13 and not even old enough to play Amy.
‘I never lost hope. I would call and check in every once in a while, like, “Hey, I’m just waiting for Booksmart to happen, it’s the love of my life!” I’d never read a script like it before. Those kind of stories do not come around that often. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime sort of deal.’ Why doesn’t she think it was made until now? ‘Like Olivia Wilde [the film’s director] always says, society had to catch up with it,’ she shrugs.
Following Amy and Molly, two academic overachievers trying to make up for lost time on the night before graduation, Booksmart, which was a massive hit, is incredibly funny but wise, unfiltered yet inclusive. There’s no fighting over boys or clichéd high school stereotypes, there’s masturbation and pornography; and the only sex scene in the entire film is between two female characters.
‘A character like Amy has never been in a movie seen by a wide audience and that was really exciting to me,’ says Dever. ‘We never mention that she’s queer in the film — we see her explore it. I remember someone thanking me for bringing the character to life because she’s a queer woman who grew up in a small town and had to go to really tiny theatres to see herself on screen. To enable someone to see themselves in a character I’m playing — what more could I ask for?’
By the time the film was finally made in 2018 (and released in 2019), Dever had a handful of small roles in higher profile films under her belt — including Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit (2017) and Beautiful Boy (2018), in which she played a drug addict opposite Timothée Chalamet — and was living with Feldstein, 26, in an apartment in West Hollywood. Introduced for the first time by Wilde right here in Chateau Marmont, the two co-stars agreed to live together (before and during filming) 20 minutes later.
‘I don’t know what the movie would be if we had just met up in the morning and said bye at the end of a work day,’ she ponders. ‘We approached preparing for the movie like Molly and Amy would — we scheduled everything, so we would get up, brush our teeth, shower, go downstairs for a coffee, go to work, come home, hang out, order food and then I’d have a bath and she’d have a shower. Our Postmates [the US equivalent of Deliveroo] bill was quite large. Sometimes I’d oversleep and Beanie would be knocking on my door, saying, “Kaitlyn, we have to go now!” But I’ll never forget my first roommate.’
It was in the last week of filming Booksmart when the script for Unbelievable found its way into Dever’s lap. ‘The role broke my heart,’ she says, looking down at the table, when we start discussing the widely watched Netflix series. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 article, ‘An Unbelievable Story Of Rape,’ which later inspired the book, A False Report, Unbelievable zooms in on the case of Marie Adler, against the backdrop of a series of rapes in Washington and Colorado between 2008-2011.
Dever threw herself into months of gruelling preparation, opting not to meet Adler herself out of respect for her privacy. So she was bowled over when she heard Adler had seen it and only had good things to say. ‘She said it was “perfect” and she found a lot of closure from watching the show,’ explains Dever. ‘When I heard that, I was like, “I don’t need anything else.” That gives me the chills. It makes me so happy. I was nervous about what she would think. I wasn’t sure if she was even going to watch it.’
The show feels very timely — was Dever prepared for the impact it would have? ‘I hesitate to say it’s a relevant story because yes, we’re living in a time where we’re listening to each other and sharing stories and we have Time’s Up and Me Too, but this is also an issue that has been going on for years and years and years. So I was aware of the impact it would have on people — I knew it was a valuable and important story for the world to see. I just didn’t understand the impact it would have on me.’
How did that impact manifest itself? ‘I put so much pressure on myself to get it right. It’s a rarity to be given a role — for people to trust you with a role — that is based on truth, and no part of me ever wanted to take that for granted. I wanted to give it everything that I had. I had to forget about my feelings; the story seemed so much bigger than me.
‘I’d keep myself in check by reminding myself that the headache I had from crying all day [during filming] was nothing in comparison to what she had gone through, so I could deal with this for the three or four months we were shooting. It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but it felt so worth it.’
Was she ever able to switch off? ‘I did kind of stay in it and I’m not even a method actor,’ she points out. ‘I think living your life is important. I don’t get too caught up in it [usually] and I’m very aware of what’s real and what’s not real, but for this, getting lost in it happened accidentally. I couldn’t help it.’
After a long day’s filming it was comforting to go back to the home of her parents — both figure skaters and coaches — and two younger sisters. Today, Dever still lives in the guest house at the back of their Los Angeles property along with her three-year-old Maltipoo Yorkie mix, Banjo, in an arrangement that seems to suit the close family well.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, but brought up in Texas (where they relocated when her father randomly got a job as the voice of the purple dinosaur in Barney & Friends), the family settled in LA when Dever was 12. Around the same time, Dever’s mother was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.
‘It definitely brought us closer,’ she says. ‘It was very scary. My baby sister was only six when our mom first got diagnosed. As the older sister, I felt a deep responsibility to not get upset, so I was always suppressing it and I think it really did affect the way I dealt with emotions then, and how I deal with them now. But it’s also helped my acting too because I guess I’m able to have perspective on what matters and let go a bit easier.’
Confident on the ice from the age of two, Dever started taking acting classes at Dallas Young Actors Studio when she was nine. ‘My parents were constantly letting us do what we wanted to do. If we wanted to do gymnastics, they’d put us in gymnastics. They were always realistic with us but they never shut anything down. They let us do our thing and it was the best. My sisters are still, and always will be, my best friends.’
Dever plays guitar and sings in a folk-rock band, Beulahbelle, with her eldest sister, Mady, and although they wrote a song for the soundtrack of 2018 film Tully, have yet to release a single. That’s set to change this coming year. ‘It does take my mind off acting,’ she reasons. ‘It’s always been a thing we’ve played around with, but now we’re really wanting to take it more seriously and write more.’
Next, Dever will appear in an episode of BJ Novak’s much anticipated but highly secretive issue-driven anthology series, Platform, alongside Hollywood wunderkind Lucas Hedges. She is about to start work on two ‘exciting’ projects she can’t really talk about, other than to say she has an eye appointment right after this, ‘to try some things out’ for her new character.
Is she pickier than ever about roles after Booksmart and Unbelievable? ‘I think I am. I want to continue to play really strong, complex women who seem like women I know and find the roles that are more often given to men. I want to find the really rich characters for women. Booksmart has been so fulfilling, that’s all I want to do now — stories that really matter and mean something. I can’t go backwards now. I don’t want to.’
Voting for the EE Bafta Rising Star Award is open to the public until 31 Jan. Go to ee.co.uk/baftas. ‘ES’ editor Laura Weir was a judge on the Bafta panel
Photographs by Sarah Bahbah, styled by Abdel Nasser
