Chandler Kinney | This Chaos... Feels So Good!

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At 21, Chandler Kinney thinks of filming Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin as her first ‘I’m not a kid anymore’ moment. “It was the first project I really took on alone,” she says. Growing up, the actor recalls sneaking Pretty Little Liars episodes in during her lunch breaks. “I felt so adult,” she says with a coy smile, “because it was a very risqué show, especially for me, being in middle school.” As a teen filming Lethal Weapon (her first regular series role) on the Warner Bros. lot, she’d ‘borrow’ the show’s flame-lined golf cart and zip around the backlot to Rosewood, wandering through the famed sets within. The original iteration peppered throughout her adolescence, thus landing a role in HBO Max’s new, albeit grittier, PLL felt like a true full circle moment.

Kinney’s mother was always close by. “She really was like my partner in crime growing up,” Kinney shares, adding, “especially in this crazy industry.” Yet filming PLL on the East Coast meant venturing away from her California hometown, going at it alone, left to handle the at-times stressful moments that such independence entails. “That was the first time I felt like I was in my adult life, adulting all by myself,” Kinney reflects.

The Original Sin set might count as Kinney’s first real brush with adulthood, but she’s been working since she was young, gracing screens in additional series, such as K.C. Undercover, and starring in Disney Channel’s ZOMBIES 2 (ZOMBIES 3, the last film of the trilogy, came out in July). As for the moment she first knew she wanted to act, Kinney regards the inclination as a feeling, as opposed to a conscious decision. “I like to say that I came out of the womb as an entertainer,” she laughs. “I was the kid that was always dancing everywhere—spinning, pirouetting, leaping through the aisles of the grocery store.” She soon swapped supermarkets for screens, starting her professional journey around the age of ten, and has been working her way up ever since.

Kinney’s hard work has landed her in Millwood (in the PLL universe) and upstate New York (in ours). Far from home, she forged close bonds with her castmates. “It was a really beautiful ‘life imitates art, art imitates life’ moment for all of us,” she smiles. “Because, in the story, you meet these girls where they know of each other, but they’re not very close. And that’s kind of where we were in real life.” Filming was intense, she admits, coupled with the added pressure of such a successful franchise. “We did really have to lean on each other and bond through the chaos of it all—amazing chaos, but chaos nonetheless!”

Amidst this beautiful chaos, the five actresses kept each other grounded, leaning on one another as their on-screen counterparts do in the show. Kinney is thankful for this support system, “especially as women,” she maintains. She’d never worked on a set with so many women, from the female-centric cast to nine out of the show’s ten directors. “To have that support made it easier to create invulnerably,” Kinney says with certainty, “and to really open ourselves up to these stories and characters.”

The importance Kinney places on women supporting one another goes beyond the set; in June, she spoke about the importance of transparency, visibility, and sharing stories at the Women in Entertainment Summit 2022 in Los Angeles. “I spoke about how, as women, we’re sometimes made to feel less than. Or that we don’t have a voice. Or that we don’t have a place to speak our minds.” Kinney wants to remind young women that they do have a place, and a right to speak up, both within and outside the entertainment industry.

The actor parlays this intent to her onscreen work. She carries it into her role in ZOMBIES 3, its locus in the Disney space fostering a slew of young admirers. “Especially being a young woman of color, providing that representation that I always looked for growing up is huge,” she says earnestly. Kinney echoes this sentiment when speaking about the female-centricity of PLL, “These five girls are layered and complex, and they all are dealing with their own various traumas and backstories. It’s definitely the kind of show that I would’ve wanted to see growing up. I think it will help people feel less alone, and give visibility to young girls growing up in today’s world—because that can be horrifying in and of itself.”

It can indeed—a certitude the show doubles down on with the introduction of horrific elements, evocative of a nineties slasher. “The show really is about these girls who are growing up in a world, in a society, in a system that has let them down, and has let them down time and time again,” says Kinney, “so these are angry girls. They’re finally stepping into their own power and deciding to do something about that.”

Kinney’s character Tabby is particularly resonant; the actor likens her character’s perspective on the world to her own. “She’s funny, she’s smart, she relentless,” Kinney says with a smile. “She becomes a force to be reckoned with, for sure.” The same can be said for Chandler Kinney, whose resolve, like Tabby’s, is clear, as she steps up and finds her voice in her own Hollywood ascent.

Check out our features with the other Liars: Bailee Madison, Maia Reficco, Malia Pyles, and Zaria.

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Photographed by Alondra Buccio
Styled by Monty Jackson
Hair: Mitchell Cantrell using Ouidad
Makeup: Sean Harris using Dior Beauty
Photo Assistant: Maya Umemoto Gorman
Style Assistants: Jake Mitchell, Mars Espinoza
Production Assistants: Chloe Cussen Frankie Benkovic
Written by Madeleine Schulz