The School for Good and Evil star Sofia Wylie has now played a witch and a princess, so it’s safe to say that she knows a thing or two about fairytales. When she calls over Zoom, she starts our conversation by debunking a legend, a personal myth in its own right.
“Everyone always thinks that I toured with Justin Bieber,” Sofia tells Teen Vogue, laughing. “I did not tour with Justin Bieber! I performed with Justin Bieber in my hometown.”
Though performing with Justin on his Purpose World Tour is a true part of Sofia’s origin story — if embellished a bit by Wikipedia scribes — the myth is only believable because of the 18-year-old’s lengthy resúmé. She was on track to become a multi-hyphenate before she could likely even spell the word, appearing on So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Got Talent as a dancer a handful of times throughout her childhood.
“I would dance in my living room, and I think my parents saw that I was just always moving,” says Sofia. “They started putting me in dance classes, and that was all I did really from the age of eight to 12. I just danced. I didn't interact with other people. I literally breathed dance.”
She spent more and more time in Los Angeles for dancing gigs, eventually hatching a plan with her dad to break into the acting side of the industry. “I started going out to little baby acting auditions and eventually worked my way up while meeting casting directors and other actors and getting into that world with connections,” she says. “Pretty quickly after that I booked Andi Mack… and it's been an avalanche ever since.”
After starring in Disney Channel’s Andi Mack as Andi’s best friend Buffy, Sofia landed another main role on the Disney+ hit High School Musical: The Musical: The Series as Gina Porter. Though it may feel like a lucky landslide of starring roles, Sofia knows that the stars were aligning with her in mind.
Her dancing background and physical training has helped her with almost every part she’s booked, from Buffy the athlete to Gina the dancer (Gina was written to be a dancer only after Sofia landed the role), to her role as Agatha in The School for Good and Evil. “I had to do a lot of stunts,” she says. “The coordination of learning choreography my whole life really helped with that.”
In the new fantasy film, now streaming on Netflix, childhood best friends Agatha and Sophie (played by Sophia Anne Caruso) are separated when sent to opposing sides of an enchanted academy — Aggie in the School for Good, and Sophie in the School for Evil. While trying to reckon with the labels they are given and control their own fate, they find themselves at the center of an extraordinary battle to protect the balance of good and evil.
The film is an adaptation of the popular YA series written by Soman Chainani. “When I was having a meeting about the script and getting the breakdown, I was like, ‘Wow, I'm sorry, this sounds so familiar,’” recalls Sofia. “After the meeting I go on to my Goodreads account and I see that I had it on my To-Read list. So I had heard about the book, read the summary and loved it enough to want to read it soon — I just hadn't gotten to it yet. Even if I hadn't booked this role, I definitely would've been a fan.”
She ended up reading the first book in preparation for filming, but soon learned that nothing could have truly prepared her for production of a fantasy movie.
“Special effects [are] weird!” says Sofia. “I thought for some reason that filming would [involve real] magic, like I would be on set and point my finger and the thing would float. I don't know why I didn't realize that it's all fake. [Instead] I have a man in a green suit with a stick and he’s pretending to be a stymph that’s coming to eat me, and I have to somehow conjure up enough belief in my mind. It is so challenging, but I think it’s what I’m most grateful for in the entirety of filming. I had to completely become a child again. I had to regain that unrealistic sense of imagination and incorporate that into my daily life at work.”
Though so much of her time on-set involved a heightened imagination, Sofia says she was able to ground herself in her connection to her character. Agatha is a complex heroine for the ages, a reluctant witch-turned-princess who uses her elite position to celebrate the differences in others rather than ostracize them.
“Agatha and I are quite similar in the sense that I didn't really feel like I belonged [through] a lot of my childhood. I still have pings of that in my life,” she says. “But especially when I was younger growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, I looked around at my classmates and my dance friends and I thought to myself very subconsciously, ‘Oh, I don't look like anybody here.’ It's very normal as humans to want to belong… I wanted to change every part of myself in order to look like the girls around me. [Now] I would never want to change a single thing about me. I'm learning to love myself so much more, and I think that's a huge part of Agatha's arc. She hates herself because of the way she's so different. And throughout the film we see that she knows deep down that her beauty resides in her uniqueness.”
Remaining true to herself was a lesson Sofia learned firsthand while surrounded by icons on set. Actors Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Yeoh, Charlize Theron, and Kerry Washington all star in the movie as powerful, magical professors. As a performer, Sofia holds her own in her scenes with such acting veterans, especially with her most frequent scene partner, Kerry Washington. Sofia had to actively stop herself from “fangirling” and “acting for approval.”
“Most of my scenes were one-on-one with Kerry, and I went into a lot of them quite nervous because I wanted to impress her,” she says. “I wanted her approval that I was good, because I love her. But then I also had to take that pressure off of myself, because that would ruin the entire dynamic, when my character is supposed to really not care about her at all… I think it was a good challenge for me to see that I don't need to be anything for anyone, even if I do idolize them. Everyone is human and we're all actors who are trying our best.”
Trying her best is all Sofia wants to do. As an “actual adult” now at 18, she’s approaching what she calls her “growing season” with optimism in her heart. She’s hoping for a School for Good and Evil sequel, planning the legacy of her production company (“I would love to bring a book that I love and make it a reality, and give people a voice and a platform”), and currently filming the fourth season of HSMTMTS. She’s ready for anything that comes her way, embracing every new opportunity with warm enthusiasm.
But there is one thing she’d definitely do again if given the chance. “I'd love to play a princess again,” Sofia says with wonder. “Like, cast me in Bridgerton right now! I'll do it!”