Ali Skovbye Isn’t Ready To Say Goodbye To ‘Firefly Lane’

Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 of Firefly Lane ahead.

Acting is more than just a career for Ali Skovbye. Since being scouted for a national car commercial at just four years old, portraying characters on screen has given her a crucial means of expression, a special bond with her sister, an unexpected best friend, and a show she doesn’t want to say goodbye to.

The Canadian actor snagged her first major credit in 2009 as Beth in Personal Effects, and has appeared in popular films and television shows including Smallville, Supernatural, and Once Upon a Time. When asked what initially inspired her to get in front of a camera, Skovbye credited her older sister Tierra, best known for her role as Riverdale’s Polly Cooper. “I started as a younger sister wanting to do everything that her older sister was doing,” Skovbye explained in a phone interview. “At the start, it was just for fun. And as I got older — around like 13 or 14 — I started to realize this is something that I want to do, if I can, for the rest of my life.” After noteworthy roles in When Calls the Heart and Breakthrough, Netflix cast Skovbye as the teenage counterpart to Katherine Heigl’s Tully Hart in Firefly Lane, based on Kristin Hannah’s novel of the same name.

The series follows Tully and Kate’s inseparable friendship through the decades, with Roan Curtis and Sarah Chalke starring as teen and adult Kate, respectively. In Season 2, which premieres today, Skovbye’s effortlessly cool, plucky ’70s character continues her emotional coming-of age journey. But on top of typical teen struggles, we see Tully searching for the father she’s never met, navigating a toxic relationship with her mother, and experiencing PTSD from her sexual assault in Season 1. When reflecting on her complex character, Skovbye revealed she both relates to and envies Tully. But ultimately, she’s grateful that the fictional teen helped pushed her out of her comfort zone.

“I love her so much because she’s so strong and powerful and willing to speak her mind and unapologetically herself,” Skovbye shared. “I think I struggled with that a lot growing up, being comfortable in my own skin and unapologetically myself. So it was really fun to be able to play someone who didn’t give a fuck, and said what she wanted, and did what what she felt. That’s such an empowering, amazing experience.”

While gushing over the catharsis of watching teenage Tully stand up for herself and embrace her independence in Season 2, Skovbye pointed to a scene in which her character refuses to back down in an argument with the school principal. “That is the scene that I use as my point of reference always,” she said. “I would be crying in that chair. If I got in trouble in school I would be so anxious. So it’s really fun to play someone who stands up for herself, especially in that situation as she 100% should have…We’re definitely alike in the ways we hide our emotions and push things under the rug. We don’t talk about it and hope it’ll go away. But we’re a lot different too.”

As our discussion shifted to her two main scene partners — Roan Curtis, who plays teen Kate, and Beau Garrett, who plays Tully’s mom Cloud — Skovbye’s voice beamed through the phone with all the warmth of Firefly Lane‘s golden sun-drenched ’70s flashbacks. “Beau is the best. Watching her live is an incredible experience. I can’t picture anyone else who could play Cloud. Truly. She is so good,” Skovbye raved. “It all feels so natural when the two of us are together. We do the full gambit. We laugh, we cry, we do everything. But I think that’s that’s what makes it like so beautiful with her.” Though Skovbye is one of Garrett’s biggest fans, she’s the first to acknowledge that the relationship between Tully and Cloud is unhealthy and turbulent at times. In Part 1 of Season 2’s two-part release, we see Cloud get arrested and channel her inner Carol Brady upon release, only turn back to alcohol and drugs again. It’s a heartbreaking cycle to witness, but Tully gets through it with support from her best friend Kate.

Little did Skovbye know when she signed on to play Tully, the strong on-screen friendship at the core of Firefly Lane would lead to a life-changing off-screen bond between her and Curtis.

“We are just as close as we are on the show. We’re so lucky,” Skovbye said. “Us being so close and being best friends is honestly the best takeaway from the show. We talk every single day. And we’re so different, too, which is crazy. Just like Kate and Tully are kind of polar opposite humans, it’s really cool to be friends with someone so different and explore their life and the way they think. I think that’s why [Kate and Tully’s friendship] portrays so well. It’s just us. It’s just us a couple years younger — and in the ’70s.”

For all the fun and laughs that Skovbye and her co-stars share on set, and all of Kate and Tully’s lighthearted teen antics, Season 2 tackled heavy subjects including addiction, trauma, mental health, and sexual assault. When Skovbye looks back at the series’ final batch of episodes, there’s no doubt in her mind that Tully’s PTSD and the processing of her sexual assault were her biggest challenges as an actor. “It’s a dark [headspace] to be in, and I’ve talked about this a little bit, but your body doesn’t understand that what’s happening is not real life,” she explained. “So in your brain, you’re like, ‘OK. We’re just acting. We’re just acting.’ And you can repeat that to yourself, but your body doesn’t understand that the emotions and everything that’s going on is not actually happening in real life. So you kind of keep a little bit of that stored in your body. It’s weird — it’s a weird feeling.”

Though the scenes were emotionally draining to shoot and relive over the course of two seasons, Skovbye is proud of the show’s commitment to difficult storylines and thoughtful storytelling. “It’s just wanting to portray it as as truthfully as possible, because there’s so so many people that go through this, so I just want to fully do it justice the best way that I can,” she shared. “The main thing I hope people take away is that you’re not alone. I think seeing things on TV is one of the best ways to realize that they happen to other people…and it can make you feel less alone and maybe help you want to talk about it. I think we’re normalizing the fact that it’s OK to have these things be in TV shows, and it’s OK to talk about it… And I love that we don’t shy away from anything because it’s not pretty conversation.”

Netflix plans to drop seven additional episodes of Firefly Lane in 2023, so the journey isn’t over yet. But Skovbye has been struggling with the thought of saying goodbye to the series, the cast, and of course, Tully. “I’ve seen all of it. I think I cried almost every episode,” she said. “It was first time I felt really, really sad about not being able to play a character again. Maybe a month before we were about to be finished I was just sitting on the couch alone one day, and I just started to sob.”

After bonding over our shared struggles with goodbyes and change, Skovbye attempted to unpack her bottled up Firefly Lane emotions. “It’s just such a weird feeling that I’m never going to play this girl again. For some reason Tully is such a relieving character for me to play because it’s everything I’ve kind of always wanted to be. I feel like it’s my weird alter ego in some way, where I get to just like do and say whatever I want without consequences,” she laughed. “So it’s kind of really sad that I don’t get to do that anymore and explore her anymore and play with her anymore, especially with Roan…Acting with her was one of the best experiences ever. With emotional things, we could literally just look in each other’s eyes for 10 seconds and immediately start crying, or just grab each other’s hand and immediately feel each other’s energy.”

Skovbye may be done playing Tully on screen, but we can all take comfort in knowing she isn’t done dressing like her. “I love her clothes. When we wrapped we got to just walk through the wardrobe room of all of our clothes that we’ve worn throughout the past three years and…kind of just take whatever we wanted. So I’ve got a few statement pieces of hers for sure that I still wear,” she revealed. And though Firefly Lane is coming to an end, Skovbye fully plans to act again. “There’s endless reasons why I want to do it, but the main reason is I love how it’s like my own personal form of therapy,” she reflected. “One of the reasons that it’s so good for me is that it’s a personal outlet to express my emotions and get all of my stuff out there.”

When asked if she could tease Tully’s journey in the final seven episodes, Skovbye swiftly delivered one of the most iconic letdowns I’ve ever heard. “It’s hard, because I can’t really share anything. I always want to be careful not to be a Tom Holland and spoil it,” she said. “I just I hope that fans like it. They waited so long for it to come out. So I hope it lives up to the expectations that people have had.”

The first nine episode of Firefly Lane Season 2 are currently available to stream on Netflix. The final seven episodes will drop in 2023.