Celebrity
Sophia Lillis & Wyatt Oleff Test Their IRL Friendship
Spoiler alert: They know pretty much everything about each other.
I Am Not Okay With This, a new Netflix series about young love, isn’t the first time stars Sophia Lillis and Wyatt Oleff have sparked on screen together — the first time was just a whole lot scarier. The pair first lit up the screen (and scared the hell out of us) as the young stars of It, a make of Stephen King’s spooky classic.
In the new series, Lillis and Oleff go from being terminally stressed out clown killers to awkward best friends Sydney Novak and Stanley Barber. Syd is a teenager struggling with both grief and her burgeoning knowledge of her own superpowers. Stanley is a normal kid who befriends her. Together, they bring show to life with their natural chemistry
It’s no surprise, because they’re actually friends behind the scenes. In fact, the pair were cast in I Am Not Okay With This because they are friends IRL.
“It was a really interesting process,” executive producer Dan Levine told Decider. “It took us a very, very long time, and a little bit of panic toward the end where we just didn’t find that right person [for Sydney]. When we found Sophia, we just knew it. She just had that deadpan quality, she was really likable, and really vulnerable, and you really feel for her.
“And then the Stanley search was even harder. We didn’t know what to do. And then someone had the brilliant idea — they saw that [Sophia and Wyatt] were actual friends in real life. There’s a lot of stuff on social media with those two paling around and it was just a brilliant lightning stroke. We were like, ‘Oh my god, this is our Stanley.'”
Lillis and Oleff brought their IRL BFF vibes to the Bustle Booth, where they discussed the ins and outs of being besties — and put their friendship to the test. Check out the video above.
Executive Creative Director: Lauren Sofair
Executive Producer: Whitney Buxton
Producer: Lauren Tegtmeyer
Director of Photography: Marshall Stief
Camera Operator: Jasmine Velez
Camera Operator: Stephen Taylor
Design Director: Andenew Ayele
Motion Designer: Jeff Donlan
Editor: Meline Rosales
Video Assistant: Sasha Mahmood
This article was originally published on
