Katie Stevens goes from ‘Faking It’ to making it

By Rick Bentley

Tribune News Service

The new Freeform series “The Bold Type” focuses on three close friends living in a major metropolitan area who split their time between working and talking about life over drinks. Most of the time they’re doing this while sitting around in clothes that most young professionals would have to save years to afford.

If “The Bold Type” sounds familiar, you are not alone. It didn’t take series star Katie Stevens long to see how the show would be compared to “Sex and the City.” Along with Stevens, the show’s central trio features Aisha Dee as Kat and Meghann Fahy as Sutton.

“I remember after my show, ‘Faking It,’ got canceled, I was having meetings with different casting departments. I sat down with the people at Freeform just for a kind of get-to-know-you meeting,” Stevens says. “The women at Freeform were telling me about this new show and sold it to me as a modern day ‘Sex and the City.’”

Stevens is excited people are comparing her new drama to a program like “Sex and the City” because it has had a loyal following since its launch in 1998. The 24-year-old Connecticut native has been performing since she was 3 including an eighth place finish on the ninth season of “American Idol” when she was only 16. The four short seasons she spent on “Faking It” have been the longest running job in her career.

As soon as Stevens read the script, she connected with the character of Jane, an aspiring writer whose biggest detractor is herself. Jane will have to find her writer’s voice while living in the glamorous world of fashion magazine publishing. The three friends work at Scarlet, a publication that has gone from an extreme focus on beauty to an expanded look at all of the elements that come together to make a well-rounded woman.

The connection to Jane was easy for Stevens because she saw a lot of herself in the character after only reading one script.

“Obviously, we don’t do the same thing careerwise, but I can be a little type-A. I think a lot of people, like I did, will be able to relate to having a vision of how you expect your life to go and where you want to go,” Stevens says. “Then you begin to figure out it’s going to a little more difficult than you anticipated.

“For Jane, her dream all her life was to work at Scarlet and she romanticized how that would turn out and how her first day would turn out. She never anticipated it would be so difficult. “

Having an optimistic view of life is something the singer/actor understands. Stevens laughs as she talks about how when she was young, there was never any doubt in her mind that all she had to do was move to Los Angeles and her career would go into high gear. Her appearance on “American Idol” gave her some notoriety, especially because she was part of the show’s touring company that year.

What followed was a series of small roles including playing Marg Helgenberger’s daughter in the two-hour series finale of “CSI.” The MTV comedy series “Faking It” was her biggest break. She and Rita Volk played best friends who decide to come out as lesbians just for the celebrity status.

Those successes were mixed with years of chasing her dream, facing the grind of endless auditions and learning how to deal with the ever abundant amount of rejection that flows through Hollywood. That never stopped her from chasing both an acting and singing career.

“The Bold Type,” launching July 11, was inspired by the life of Joanna Coles, chief content officer for Hearst Magazines, including Cosmopolitan. Because Coles is one of the executive producers for the cable series, Stevens was able to talk with many of the Cosmopolitan writers. Her main question was whether or not their story ideas got rejected as much as Jane’s get knocked down.

“They told me their ideas get shot down all the time,” Stevens says. “So Jane is ringing true.”

Stevens got an insight into the world of writing from the staff members and Coles, and Stevens said that strengthened her respect for writers. She has no problem writing songs but any attempt to write something more elaborate has been a struggle.

Stevens didn’t have to get much background on what kind of material would be found in a magazine like Scarlet as she’s read similar publications all her life. Sometimes, reading one of the magazines wasn’t her proudest moment.

“When I was in high school, I always had a Seventeen or Cosmo,” Stevens says. “When you are a teenager you read things in magazines like Cosmo that might be inappropriate for your age. I have vivid memories of sitting on a plane reading a Cosmo and hiding the cover so they wouldn’t know I was ready about ‘The 100 Best Sex Moves.’”