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Los Angeles (USA), Oct 23 (EFE) .

Actress McKenna Grace leaves her childhood roles behind with ‘Regretting You,’ her first leading role and “first on-screen romance,” which also marks her third project as an executive producer: “I want to continue playing fun and complex characters,” she said in an interview with EFE.

Grace plays Clara Grant, a talented 16-year-old, almost 17, who experiences her first love amidst a family tragedy that jeopardizes her relationship with her mother, Morgan, played by Allison Williams.

“I grew up as a child actress, and this (film) was like taking a step toward something a little more mature, or simply playing someone my age. It was my first romance, and it was also a drama and a family story,” she says.

The film, directed by Josh Boone (‘The Fault in Our Stars’), is based on the script and book by writer Colleen Hoover, author of titles such as ‘It Ends With Us’, also adapted into a film, and the upcoming adaptation of ‘Verity’.

“I read the script first and spoke to Josh and Brunson. I just completely fell in love with both (characters). Basically, when I talked to them it was like, ‘Please, please, please hire me,'” says Mckenna.

Boone and producer Brunson Green had already considered the ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ actress for the role of Clara, and once they hired her, the 19-year-old actress delved into the original story written by Hoover: “I underlined everything and took notes,” she says.

In the film, Clara loses her father almost at the same time she begins to grow close to Miller Adams, played by Mason Thames, a classmate whose grandfather is suffering from cancer and whose father, an old acquaintance of Clara’s parents, had a very bad reputation in town.

While her mother opposes the relationship, the story of Morgan and Jonah Sullivan, played by Dave Franco, unfolds in parallel, as they go through the confusing grieving process of their partners’ deaths.

Although Grace assures that one of her intentions was to be “faithful to the fans” of Hoover, that didn’t stop her from getting involved with her character, giving it her own unique twist.

“We all loved the book, the characters, and the script, so together with Josh and each other, we tried to create our own version, a kind of mash-up of how we imagined everything should be. I think we did quite well,” she considers.

While Clara is a young teenager trying to find her calling, McKenna Grace at her age had already been a screenwriter for films like ‘The Bad Seed Returns’ or an executive producer on that film as well as ‘What We Hide’.

Furthermore,She has also built a career as a singer by releasing EPs such as ‘Bittersweet 16’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’.

Even with all that professional experience, Grace managed to identify with Clara: “It was a very natural character to play. At the end of the day, I felt like I was just playing a teenage girl who’s experiencing a lot of emotions,” she says.

The actress has several projects in the works, including the second part of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’, ‘Straight Lines’, as well as ‘Scream 7’ and ‘The Hunger Games: Sunrise on Reaping’, both scheduled for 2026.

“My goals now are simply to keep working and doing things I can be proud of, playing characters that are complex and fun, and telling stories that feel important to me. But I don’t know, I just love what I do so much, that I just want to keep working to the best of my ability,” she stated.