Trina has been exonerated and her friendship with Josslyn remains strong. How has it been continuing that on-screen bond with the new Trina, Tabyana Ali? “It’s been really fun getting to work with Tabyana. I think we have great chemistry and it’s a fresh dynamic. She came in as a recast in the middle of the sex tape story, and to have a change like that in the middle of something so tense and emotionally heightened, I was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this change!’ But I trust [Casting Director] Mark Teschner and our producers and everyone who has a say in the matter, and I knew whoever they hired would be someone they believed in, so I wasn’t seriously concerned. And once we actually started working together I knew I had nothing to worry about.”
Sparks have begun to fly between Josslyn and Dex. Tell me about working with your new co-star, Evan Hofer (Dex). “It’s been great! We just started working together so everything is still pretty new, but he’s really great and the material we’ve had is fun. It’s all about reading in between the lines with him and it’s a matter of working together to bring out that chemistry and the mystery of what both of the characters are both feeling, because they’re in a complicated situation. It’s fun to try to find those moments and those beats to play that aren’t necessarily written down. He’s so respectful, a total professional, and he gets along with everybody on set. I couldn’t ask for a better new scene partner. There’s definitely a physical attraction there, but there are so many reasons that it can’t happen, and I think those kinds of stories are almost the most interesting to watch.”
Josslyn loves Cam and she’s committed to him, so it’s not very convenient for her to feel this attraction to Dex. How do you think she’s processing that? “You know, a lot of stuff has happened with her and Cam that has affected the relationship. She’s dealing with trust issues because he knew this entire other side of Spencer that he decided to keep from Joss. I don’t think things ever bounced back between them after the sex tape [was leaked]. You go through a trauma like that and dynamics change. They haven’t shared that same intimacy because I think Josslyn, and maybe Cam, still feels so scared and so violated and she associates being intimate with him with a scary thing now, which is really hard to deal with when you’re 19-year-olds in a relationship and there are so many unspoken wounds.”
Do you think she feels guilty about not telling Cam about what’s happening with her on the Dex front? “I think she does feel guilty about it, but I think she’s also a bit put out by Cam’s behavior. She’s constantly like, ‘Cam did this, so it’s fine that I’m doing that.’ I think it’s her natural tendency, because of her guilt, to try to justify her own behavior.”
On the family front, there’s been a lot of tension between Joss and Sonny lately. Do you enjoy playing that prickly dynamic with Maurice Benard (Sonny)? “Oh, it’s hilarious. I’ve gone through stages on the show before of Josslyn hating him and it’s always really funny because I love him so much and we have such a funny friendship, like, off the show. We just behave terribly together, like we’re two clowns giving each other a hard time so when we do have to be serious, it’s so hard! It is actually so hard when someone is so funny and so much fun like he is, to have to hold that angry stare. We laugh at the end of every single take.”
