“It was a real cultural experience,” Richardson-Sellers said.
“The Kissing Booth 2” stars Maisie Richardson-Sellers and Meganne Young are sharing some of their personal experiences from shooting the Netflix rom-com in Cape Town.
While speaking with TooFab via Zoom, the actresses opened up about filming in the South African port city, which so happens to be Young’s hometown.
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“It was crazy. So I was actually cast when the first film shot in South Africa, I was living in Cape Town,” Young began. “So I booked the role there and then I moved to Vancouver and then I got a call to say, ‘Hey, do you want to go back?’ And like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that!'”
“It was so great,” she said of returning to South Africa for the sequel. “I think because of the period of time in between, it was really cool to see how everyone had kind of grown-up a little bit, how everyone had changed, but in the same way, they’d all stayed the same. It was literally like just going home to see my onset family, it was great. That was a wonderful experience.”
Richardson-Sellers, who joins the cast for “The Kissing Booth 2,” echoed Young’s thoughts about Cape Town, calling the city “the most stunning place.”
“It has a really complex history,” she explained, saying she enjoyed “going into the townships and having real conversations with people and being invited into people’s homes and working with some incredible organizations who support local people there.”
“It was a real cultural experience. It was heavy at times, but on the other side you were on set and you’re having a great time every day,” she continued. “You’re working with lots of South African actors who were playing the other school kids who were so much fun and they would sort of take us out on the town and show us that side of things and feasting, amazing tasting menus and wine tasting.”
“The Kissing Booth 2,” the sequel to the 2018 hit teen Netflix rom-com, follows Elle Evans (Joey King) as she struggles to balance her senior year of high school, a new friendship with a handsome classmate named Marco (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi), who is a freshman at Harvard. After Noah becomes friends with a gorgeous college girl named Chloe (Richardson-Sellers), Elle begins to worry about her relationship. At the time same, Elle is torn between attending UC Berkeley with her best friend Lee (Joel Courtney) and Harvard with Noah. If that weren’t enough, Elle often finds herself as the third wheel to Lee and his girlfriend Rachel (Young).
When TooFab asked Richardson-Sellers and Young what, if anything, they have in common with their characters, the actresses both noted that they not only have certain similarities with Chloe and Rachel but that they admire their characters.
“I went to Oxford, [Chloe] goes to Harvard. So we have a very intense education in common. She traveled the world. I love traveling. I’ve done a lot of traveling,” said Richardson-Sellers, who grew up in the UK. “I think I have an element of this and then she takes it to the next level. I think Chloe is one of those people who she can walk into any room and she will just effortlessly be herself and sort of captivate everyone.”
“She’s a more extreme version of that than I am,” she continued. “I just think also she wants the best for everyone around her. She wants to elevate everyone around her and that’s really important to me to be someone who can be a positive impact on any space I go into. And she’s cool. I mean, she’s definitely taught me a lot and I aspire to be like her.”
Similarly, Young said she hopes she has a lot in common with her character Rachel.
“I just think that she is so lovely and she’s kind and like tries to include everyone,” she told TooFab. “And I really think that I try to do that. I think we all try to do that. I definitely think we are both quieter as people. I think she’s not as loud and rambunctious as some of the other characters and I’m a little bit like that too. I’m a bit quieter and a bit more introverted. So yeah. I think there are quite a few similarities between us, which is good. I think she’s a great character.”
Richardson-Sellers also opened up to TooFab about how her personal experiences motivated her to launch her own diversity and inclusivity-focused production company, Bareface Productions.
Check out our full interviews to see more from Richardson-Sellers and Young, including what Young had to say about Rachel’s epic s’mores costume.
“The Kissing Booth 2” begins streaming on Netflix this Friday.
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