We had a group of must-know up-and-coming actors swing by our San Diego Comic-Con interview studio last weekend! It’s the cast of Prime Video’s Paper Girls.

The show is an adaptation of the graphic novels written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang. The story focuses on four 12-year-old paper girls just starting their routes in the wee hours of the morning on November 1, 1988, aka Hell Day. Things do get a little rowdy in Stony Stream the day after Halloween, so when the girls are attacked by some bullies, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise — that is until that attack ends with the foursome time traveling to 2019.

Paper Girls Prime Video
Image via Prime Video 

Paper Girls is a rather ambitious production in a number of respects. Not only does the show involve time travel and other sci-fi elements that call for significant set pieces and effects, but this out-of-this-world adventure is also tethered to deeply personal journeys for all four girls. While that may seem like a challenging combination for four stars on the rise to tackle, the group insisted that past experience, excellent scripts and source material, and A+ scene partners were just what they needed to excel as Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Mac (Sofia Rosinsky), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), and KJ (Fina Strazza).

Even though Paper Girls marks Nelet’s first lead role in a series, she came to set prepared courtesy of a small part on Netflix’s sci-fi mind-bender, Altered Carbon:

“I have to say that Altered Carbon was definitely a very intense show to start off with and it was a nice introduction to the very high stakes scenes that we do in Paper Girls as well as the sci-fi aspect of it.”

Paper Girls Prime Video
Image via Prime Video 

Rosinsky plays Mac Coyle, the first paperboy who isn’t a boy. She’s intense, loud, and has no problem holding her own, qualities that make her a strong leader and deeply passionate force, but ones that can also make her come across as a bit harsh. The key to navigating such a fiery personality? Rosinsky credits the comics and the scripts:

“I can’t say I’ve played a character so abrasive and yet somehow you still, I hope you still like her … I would say the comic books were an excellent blueprint as well as just in the script she was so beautifully written, so it was like a lovely stream that I could just follow.”

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Paper Girls doesn’t premiere on Prime Video until July 29th, so we had to stay light on plot details, but when asked for a moment when the value of a good scene partner came in handy, Strazza immediately highlighted a standout KJ/Mac scene from the tail end of the first season:

“There’s this one scene that I can’t say very much about, but it was with Sofia and it is an incredible scene that you guys are gonna love when you see it. But she just does an absolutely phenomenal job in it, and it was a pleasure to work off of you. [To Rosinsky.] I don’t know if you know what scene I’m talking about, but you were really, really great.”

Paper Girls Prime Video
Image via Prime Video

As we see in the Paper Girls trailer, time travel means that the girls could possibly run into their future selves. It happens for Nelet's Erin with the older Erin played by Ali Wong, and we also get a brief tease of Tiffany’s older self played by Sekai Abenì. Given what an electric pair Jones and Abenì make, I had to ask about their collaboration. Here’s what Jones said:

“First off, Sekai is amazing. She’s so cool. Throughout filming, we filmed for a while together, and we kind of found this big sister, little sister dynamic and I think that made filming with her so much easier because of that bond. And then as far as finding the similarities in older Tiff and younger Tiff, we would meet up and we would work through our scenes together before we would go and film on set and we would find similarities that we could do to make it look the same. Like we had to drink in one scene, you probably know what I’m talking about, and there was a mug and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna put our thumb on top so it shows, hey, we’re both Tiff, but we both look so different and we both act different and we end up different.’”

Eager to hear more from the stars of Paper Girls? You can catch our full SDCC 2022 conversation in the video at the top of this article!