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"Last week, I shared with you guys my interview with Ashley Benson about her role on Pretty Little Liars (and the reason she&amp;#x27;s not comfortable in her costumes!), but what I didn&amp;#x27;t include in that post was her thoughts on her controversial role in Spring Breakers. But, because the movie is out in theaters today, March 22, I thought it was time to share. Read on! That&amp;#x27;s Caitlin Brody and me with Ashley! I saw Spring Breakers, and it was bananas! What was it like doing a movie so out of the norm? Ashley Benson: It was so liberating. The reason I chose this project&amp;amp;#8212;I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been looking for something to do during my hiatus, and I kept reminding my agent, &amp;quot;I only want to do something that&amp;amp;#8217;s different and will help put me in a new category.&amp;quot; People see me as playing Hanna on Pretty Little Liars or being the stereotypical popular blond girl. Scripts like this do not come around often. I mean, Harmony [Korine] is so different than any other director. The script was edgy, it was fun, it was scary. I was like, &amp;quot;Yes! I have to get this part.&amp;quot; And when I got it, I was so excited. Were the other girls signed on? AB: They had been signed on for a year. I literally was cast two weeks before they started shooting. I was thrown into it. I had never met Harmony. I only i-chatted with him and talked with him on the phone before I went out there to film it, so I was nervous. I looked up Harm, and of course his movies are amazing. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve watched Kids, and I was like, &amp;quot;Wow! I&amp;amp;#8217;m super excited for this.&amp;quot; But it&amp;amp;#8217;s intimidating. When I met Harm in Florida&amp;amp;#8212;he&amp;amp;#8217;s the nicest guy. I love him so much. And his wife Rachel plays one of the girls in the movie as well. It was amazing. All of the paparazzi pictures I saw during filming made it look like it was so much fun. AB: It really was. It was the most fun thing I&amp;amp;#8217;ve ever done. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve known Vanessa [Hudgens] for a really long time, and Selena [Gomez] and I got super close before we started to film. Now, all four of us, we&amp;amp;#8217;re like sisters. We hate being apart. We just got back from Europe on tour, and it was so much fun. Working with James [Franco] too&amp;amp;#8212;he&amp;amp;#8217;s such an amazing actor. It was awesome. Did you guys have any traditions being on tour together and traveling together? AB: The thing is we didn&amp;amp;#8217;t really have time to do anything. We were in a different city every day, so we&amp;amp;#8217;d get there, do press all day, do the premiere, sleep, get up early in the morning, get on a plane. Throughout Europe, we flew private, so that was our time to have fun. All we would do is play Britney Spears and run up and down the hallway. It was just us four girls and then all guys&amp;amp;#8212;the producers on the movie and Harmony. We were just going nuts in the back, and it was so much fun. So Pretty Little Liars is huge, and you guys have such a big social following. Do you get crazy tweets all the time? AB: Well last night, funny story, I Instagram-ed a picture of me and my friend Jonathan. We were at dinner, and I was reading the comments because I had just dyed my hair brown. I wanted to see what people were saying. One of the comments was &amp;quot;Oh my God, my friend&amp;#x27;s in the background. I&amp;amp;#8217;m here too!&amp;quot; I stopped, looked behind me, and was like, &amp;quot;Who? What?&amp;quot; I checked her Instagram, and was saying, &amp;quot;Which one is she? She&amp;amp;#8217;s blond. Let&amp;amp;#8217;s find her!&amp;amp;#8221; It was just so weird. I tried to look around, but they didn&amp;amp;#8217;t say anything. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to be the weird one looking around to see who commented on the picture! I think social media is super important. It helps me stay connected to my fans. I have my website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I get to see feedback of what they think of the episodes and what they think of Spring Breakers, just every day things that I do. They&amp;amp;#8217;re so supportive and so sweet. A lot of them tell me they&amp;amp;#8217;re going to be in New York or Europe, and I get to meet them. How has the response to Spring Breakers been? AB: The response we&amp;amp;#8217;ve gotten is mostly in Europe, and they&amp;amp;#8217;ve fallen in love with it. Every time, we&amp;amp;#8217;ve gotten standing ovations. It&amp;amp;#8217;s a little nerve-racking because it is for a more mature audience, but the fans that were 17 that were there really enjoyed it. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not for everybody, but so far everybody who has seen it has really, really liked it. It&amp;amp;#8217;s something you&amp;amp;#8217;ve never seen before. Some of your Pretty Little Liars fans are younger. Are you afraid they&amp;amp;#8217;ll see the movie and freak out (or their parents!)? AB: I mean, my mom is afraid to see it, and I&amp;amp;#8217;m afraid for her! She&amp;amp;#8217;s super conservative, and nobody wants to see their daughter play a role like that. But you know what? It&amp;amp;#8217;s acting, and I&amp;amp;#8217;m so proud of this movie. It was such a big step for me, Selena, and Vanessa especially. We really took a risk, and I think it&amp;amp;#8217;s going to do nothing but help us in the long run, so I&amp;amp;#8217;m excited. People have never seen me like this before. If you hate me, I will love you for that. I play a crazy psychopath who does drugs all the time. Was your mom into you taking the role? AB: She didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know I took the role until I told her I got it. She didn&amp;amp;#8217;t even know I auditioned for the role. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t really tell anybody anything I go for until I book it, so I told her, &amp;quot;Hey, I got this movie. This is what I have to do in it, so see you later?&amp;quot; then went to Florida and did it. She was concerned, but I try not to let what people think of me affect me just because I know who I am. I can&amp;amp;#8217;t stress this enough: I&amp;amp;#8217;m not this character at all. I like to stay home and cook and play with my dog, and my character&amp;#x27;s such a huge party person. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why she was so much fun to play because every day I got to escape my life. During filming, you were mixed in with real spring breakers, right? AB: Yeah. Everyone in the movie, besides the girls and James and Gucci, were all non-actors. Harmony would put us in a situation and just roll the camera, and we would just improv. A lot of the movie is improv, so it was super different. Even James. You wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t even recognize him. I remember meeting him the first night, and thinking &amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; He had tattoos everywhere, his hair was braided, gold teeth&amp;amp;#8212;he was method throughout the whole thing. He had this accent the whole time. Even for him, it&amp;amp;#8217;s so different. The movie&amp;#x27;s not just about these girls that go to the beach and party. AB: It&amp;amp;#8217;s like that in the beginning, but then it&amp;amp;#8217;s &amp;quot;Woosh! What happened?&amp;quot; Are you going to see the movie?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2013/03/ashley-benson-on-spring-breake>