Sasha Pieterse

I meet with 18-year-old Sasha Pieterse in the lobby of the upscale Trump SoHo hotel in New York City. Outside, groups of teen girls are braving the rain to grab selfies with the cast members of ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars as they trickle out the front door on their way to the airport. The night before, the entire cast gathered in front of an audience of 1,200 fans to do a special live reading of the season four finale script. Prior to the event, Sasha spent two days doing press with her core cast mates — Lucy Hale, Ashley Benson, Shay Mitchell and Troian Bellisario. I expect Sasha to show some signs of exhaustion, but she’s all smiles and is highly alert. “I got to sleep until 10:30 this morning,” she grins. I get a sense that sleeping in is a rarity for Sasha these days.

Sasha’s story begins in South Africa. She was born there and most of her family still lives there. Sasha and her parents moved to Las Vegas when she was 3. Her parents were professional dancers and recognized the opportunities available in the United States, both for themselves and their daughter. A family friend of theirs had a son in the entertainment business and Sasha stumbled into acting “kind of by accident.” She got headshots taken, sent them to an agent and was signed across the board — “Which is very unusual,” she says. Soon after, she went to her first audition — for a Lexus commercial — and booked the gig. “Which is also unheard of,” she says, laughing. Not long after, she and her family moved to California. Sasha was 6 years old when she landed her first television role, in Family Affair. The show only ran for one season, but it kickstarted Sasha’s theatrical career. Following the series cancellation, she booked a few guest star roles on shows like Stargate SG-1 and Wanted before scoring what she considers her most substantial TV role before Pretty Little Liars — a one episode appearance on House. Only 9 at the time, Sasha played a cancer patient named Andie. “I went through five and one-half hours of make-up each morning, woke up super early, but it was an amazing experience working with that cast,” she says. Her performance on House was later considered for a Daytime Emmy in 2005. Following her stint on House, Sasha filmed a few movies, including The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and Good Luck Chuck, and also appeared on the last season of Heroes.

While Sasha had been booking consistent work throughout the early stages of her career, she always faced a challenge when it came to her age. “I always looked older than I really was, and in this business that’s such a hard thing to have against you,” she says. Most companies will hire actors 18 or older to play younger roles either because of the content of the show or movie, or because of the strenuous hours attached to the project. Actors under the age of 18 can only work a certain number of hours each day, in addition to a mandatory three hours of schooling. Considering the rest of the girls in Pretty Little Liars were in their 20s when the show started, it was kind of a miracle Sasha snagged the part.

“I was 12 when I got the pilot, and graduated high school at 14,” Sasha recalls. Graduation opened the opportunity for Sasha to work at all hours by the time Pretty Little Liars’ second season began. “It allowed me to not have to worry about booking work because of my age anymore,” she says, describing it as “a weight off [her] shoulders.”

While Sasha may be the youngest actress on set, she’s used to that by now. “All my life I’ve been surrounded by adults, my friends have always been older, so I was used to that company,” Sasha explains. But she’s cautious, and only surrounds herself with people who support her and are good influences on her wellbeing. She hears a lot of negative stereotypes when people hear she’s been in the business since she was four. People assume that because she was a child actor, she’s going to mess up. “That’s such a misconception because there are hundreds of actors who started when they were really young that have done well and are successful in their careers,” she says. “It’s just the ones that do the bad things, and basically hurt themselves, are the ones that get recognized. Which is very unfortunate.”

At the time of the Pretty Little Liars pilot, Sasha was fresh off the last season of Heroes and flew to Vancouver to shoot. Once the series was picked up, some familiar faces pleasantly welcomed her onto the Warner Bros. lot. The majority of Heroes’ crew eventually worked on the set of Pretty Little Liars. “It was already a family environment from the second episode,” she says.

Sasha praises the crew for everything they do for her and the show. She is thrilled that the majority of the crewmembers for the upcoming fifth season have been on-board since the first. “It starts with the actors, and by that I mean the attitude,” Sasha explains. “It trickles down from us to the crew, and luckily we have a very positive group of people working on this show.” Sasha gets frustrated when she hears about actors who don’t care about the crew or don’t take them seriously, because at the end of the day, that’s who is making them look good. Luckily, there has never been any of that on the set of Pretty Little Liars.

“Every now and then I have to pinch myself, because it doesn’t feel like it’s my show!” Sasha exclaims of the success of Pretty Little Liars. While the show is inspired by a widely popular series of young adult books by Sara Shepard, no one involved with the show was prepared for the impact it would have on teen culture. “It just came out at the exact right time,” Sasha says. While fans of the books were likely to tune into the first episode, they were also likely to get angry if things weren’t the same in the adaptation as they pictured them in their heads. Luckily, the show’s differences were embraced early on, and they allowed the show to develop into something completely separate from the books.

And oh, did it grow. With the help of social media, Pretty Little Liars has become a cultural phenomenon, embracing outlets like Twitter like no show had ever done before. During the show, hashtags appear on the screen to encourage viewers to tweet along, and cast members will live tweet and answer questions while a new episode is airing. What began with a small Twitter phenomenon, Pretty Little Liars fans have become impossible to ignore on Tuesday nights. It has become the most tweeted about show ever and accumulated 17 million tweets in 2013 alone.

“The more our show went on, the more the demographic changed and expanded,” Sasha explains. The night before I meet Sasha, the season four finale broadcasted to over 6.3 million viewers. “Our fans are little detectives!” Sasha gushes of those who rally behind Pretty Little Liars. She describes the writer’s room as a bit of an investigator’s office, complete with a wall of plot lines and characters connected by red string. Fans of the show pay attention to every tiny detail, so much so that the writers will have to explain things they thought were insignificant later on because viewers dissect them to an incredible level of detail. It’s a good problem to have, Sasha thinks, because it allows fans to truly become a part of the show, not just watch it aimlessly each Tuesday night.

“I think fans would be happy to know that we don’t know anything either,” Sasha jokes. The producers don’t tell the cast anything about their characters or the plot before it’s necessary, in order to keep things as raw as possible on screen. So this October when it was finally revealed that Sasha’s character, Alison Di- Laurentis, was in fact alive, Sasha didn’t know before receiving that script. “I figured she had to be alive, but when it happened the way it did I was so excited,” she says of the now infamous turnaround scene.

Season four took viewers on an intense journey after they learned Ali was alive. Now that the season finale has aired, all anyone wants to know is what will happen in season five. “It’s going to be a completely different show!” Sasha dishes. “We’ve never seen Alison like this. She’s a dead girl walking.” The dynamic between all the characters will change drastically now that the girl who was supposed to be dead has actually been in hiding the whole time. While scripts are still being worked on and none of the cast knows anything yet, Sasha has high hopes for what will come of her character. “I want reconciliation, but I know it’s not going to be that easy for [Alison],” she says. Alison will be reintroduced into society and forced to interact with people she bullied before she disappeared. On top of that, it was revealed in the last seconds of the season finale that her mom is now dead.

As far as spoilers go, Sasha doesn’t have many to give for what’s to come in season five, but the main focus will continue to be the search for “A,” the girls’ unknown tormenter. However, Sasha hints that there will be new characters coming into play, as well as some old favorites returning. In a sense, Alison herself is a whole new character because until season four, all of her appearances were either flashbacks or dreams. “I realized, now that I’m playing Alison and she’s alive, she is a totally different character. She’s a victim, she’s been emotionally wounded, and I get to capture that,” Sasha says. With so much information coming out in the season four finale, most importantly (in Sasha’s opinion) Alison’s mother burying her alive, season five is already set to turn some heads.

After Sasha returns to the small screen for the entire summer when Pretty Little Liars comes back in June, she’ll make her way to the big screen this December in Inherent Vice. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon and more and takes place in Los Angeles in the 1970s. It focuses on Phoenix’s character, a detective whose girlfriend goes missing. “It’s different than anything I’ve ever done before. I play a 22 year old cocaine addict,” Sasha says. The film is far out of Sasha’s comfort zone, and she soaked up as much knowledge as she could from both the cast and director Paul Thomas Anderson. “I was very intimidated, but movies is where I want to be,” she says. The cast has high hopes for Inherent Vice and they’re all crossing their fingers they make it to award show season next year.

On the opposite side of the entertainment world, Sasha has always had an interest and passion for music. While acting is her priority, she does try to release singles whenever she can. “I think singles are all I can do right now, aside from small performances here and there,” she says. While Sasha would love to tour in the future, her schedule doesn’t permit it right now. “I wouldn’t want to do just a two week tour, I’d want to do a big, official tour,” she says. Movies and guest starring roles take priority for Sasha during Pretty Little Liars’ hiatus, but if nothing comes up after this season is finished filming she is going to focus on music again.

In terms of influences, Sasha is drawn to country music stars like Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood. The storytelling aspect of country songs appeals to her, especially since she hasn’t had the opportunity to tell a story with a full album yet, only with singles. “It’s an easy outlet for me,” she says of writing in that style. She writes all her own music with the help of producer and writer Dan Franklin. She hopes to at least have another single or two out this year.

While it’s easy to see the impact Sasha and Pretty Little Liars have had on their fans via Twitter or through the fans waiting outside the Trump SoHo, the minute it hit Sasha was when she was in Hawaii filming a guest spot for Hawaii 5-0. She was exploring on one of the islands and the phrase “You can’t see me, but I see you. – A” was written on the wall in a cave. “It’s just been a whirlwind experience…I can’t believe five years have passed already,” Sasha says. With a full season to film and a new movie being released in the next eight months, it’s no doubt that year six will go by just as fast. Here’s hoping Sasha will get a chance to sleep until 10:30 again soon.