Bella Thorne is the last person you’d think would be a heroin addict, which is precisely the point of the movie Perfect High.
The red-haired actress, singer and former Disney star exudes wholesomeness, both in person and through the nicer characters she has played.
The teen idol with six million Twitter followers is such a solid role model, it made her a natural for the starring role in the Lifetime movie filming here, producer Tina Pehme said.
Thorne plays Amanda, a high-school dancer in suburban Chicago who becomes addicted to heroin after taking prescription painkillers for a knee injury.
After falling in with a group of cool high schoolers played by Israel Broussard (The Bling Ring), Daniela Bobadilla (Anger Management) and Ross Butler (Teen Beach Movie), the former Shake It Up star’s character begins sharing pills and attending “pharm” parties. Her growing dependence on painkillers spirals into addiction.
Things go from bad to worse when a classmate sells them heroin disguised as a cheaper painkiller from Mexico.
“Bella is actually a super-responsible young girl, and one of the most talented and focused young people I’ve ever met,” said Pehme during a shooting break at Bayside Middle School. “She really felt it was an important message to get out there.”
The capital region is masquerading as suburban Chicago, with local extras and dancers featured at locations including Spectrum Secondary School, a private home in Uplands, the Wendy Steen Mitchell Dance Studio and Crystal Pool, where underwater sequences were filmed.
With this week’s headline-grabbing stories about youths overdosing on the club drug Molly, and Cory Monteith’s fatal heroin overdose in 2013 still fresh in minds, the film’s topic is timely.
“Cory’s death was the trigger point because a lot of people went: ‘What? Cory’s doing heroin?’ and [were] shocked,” recalled Pehme, who is producing with Kim C. Roberts, her partner in Vancouver’s Sepia Films Ltd. The executive producer is Emmy Award-winner Sheri Singer, whose credits include producing the Donahue show from 1975 to 1982, and executive positions with Walt Disney Television and Lifetime.
“The heroin thing was an eye-opener and seemed to be the tip of the iceberg,” Pehme said. “Sheri and I are both mothers and we were talking about issues we could explore.”
Singer said making the film, directed by Vanessa Parise (Kiss the Bride) from a screenplay by Anne-Marie Hess, marks a return to her first love.
“I’m kind of a junkie always looking for ideas and stories that affect adolescence and young adults,” said the former journalist with a nose for finding “cutting-edge” issues to explore on film.
“With Donahue, we were always looking for ideas and we didn’t have the Internet then,” said the Chicago native, who admitted she was shocked to learn that heroin had become the drug of choice for many suburban teenagers.
Shooting Perfect High was also a learning experience for Thorne, whose favourite drug-addiction movie is Requiem for a Dream.
“This role is definitely challenging,” said the performer, who is currently appearing in the movie The Duff. Thorne’s other credits include roles in Blended and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Her research included “watching a lot of YouTube videos” and exploratory sessions with Parise, who, Thorne said, “really gets inside my head” before she acts her scenes.
“I’ve actually talked to a lot of addicts and Skyped them on my time here before I go to bed, and then I wake up for my call next morning and have all their stuff freshly in my head,” Thorne said.
On her last shooting day, the Spandex-clad actor sported a hot-pink woollen sleeve over her injured knee. It was Amanda’s emotional pain she most obviously conveyed, however, while filming an altercation in the school hallway with her friend Alexis (Jasmine Sky Sarin).
Pehme said “keeping it real” was key, and credited Parise and Hess “who struggled with drugs herself when she was young” with ensuring that the film didn’t glamourize drug use.
“It’s truly a portrait of something that could happen to anybody,” Pehme said, recalling seeing photos of pharm parties at which high schoolers trade drugs in little packages with designer names such as Prada.
“People think heroin is a street drug just used by druggies, strung-out people tweaking under a bridge somewhere, but it isn’t. It’s readily available. And these aren’t bad kids. Most are high-performing academically, and a lot of them are on things like Adderall to make them focus, so they start trading that for some other kind of drug.”
Of her character, Thorne said: “Originally, she doesn’t even know she’s doing heroin.”
Matreya Fedor, the Vancouver-based actor who plays Amanda’s dance teammate Brooke, said social media plays a starring role on screen and off.
“The fans have kept everyone very lively,” said the 17-year-old. “We don’t want to give away any spoilers, but it’s great being able to take photos and share what we’re doing on set and in our lives.”
The social-media strategy will intensify with a campaign including public-service announcements before the film airs this summer on Lifetime in the U.S. and Superchannel in Canada.
“Social media is the way teenagers talk,” Pehme said. “No matter what they do, they have to report what they’re doing.”