‘Faking It’s Katie Stevens Talks Karma and Amy’s Friendship and Missed Connections

Nivea Serrao April 19, 2016, 3:00 pm

Faking It, Katie Stevens, Rita Volk — MTV

Ep. 301 Amy and Karma

It’s definitely less trick and more treat on Faking It as Tuesday’s episode takes on Halloween.

“It’s actually one of my favorite episodes because we all got to dress up in costumes and decorate Hester with creepy mazes and things like that,” says Katie Stevens who plays Karma Ashcroft on the MTV comedy. However, tonight’s half hour won’t just be spooky-themed fun and games. Each of the characters will be dealing with some unresolved business.

“Your’e going to get closure on whether Karma was gonna show up to be with Liam the night that her dad had a heart attack and how that works out,” says Stevens of her character’s almost-reunion with her ex, Liam (Gregg Sulkin).But she won’t be the only one working through some issues. “Lauren has a new apartment that she’s scared to stay in alone, and you’re going to see if Shane can get past the fact that Liam slept with his sister last season. All of the characters have little insecurities that come out in this episode.”

TV Insider caught up with Katie Stevens to talk about Karma’s missed connection with Liam, her friendships with Shane and Amy and just how Hester High will deal with this holiday.

After their little missed connection, is Karma kind of still thinking about possibly pursuing a relationship with Liam, or is she kind of past that now?
It’s like any high school relationship where you’ve fallen in love with someone. It’s hard to forget that person and it takes time. Any time the opportunity has presented itself for Karma and Liam to be together, she thinks about it. It’s a “You always want what you can’t have” type thing. When she sees that he’s with someone else too, that sparks that even more. You’re going to see a little bit of that, but you’re also gonna to see a more grown up, mature side to Karma in this episode, in her decision making towards that.

I’ve noticed that about Karma this season. She’s a lot calmer in her approach to things.
She’s come to terms with the fact that a lot of her decisions and choices that she makes are impulsive. And the repercussions of those are the fact that she hurts people that she loves and she really doesn’t want to do that. This season she’s trying to be smarter. I still see her do some impulsive things, but she’s learning and she’s growing which I think people are starting to see.

How are Karma and Amy doing now? We saw last week that they’ve made up, but they did do a lot of hurtful things when they were mad at each other. Will any of that come up again later this season?
What I like about the Karma and Amy relationship is, yes, in terms of when they were pretending to be lesbians, those things come up, like the kiss in the pool and things like that. But they don’t get closure on [it]. But what I like about this season is that their friendship is what’s saved. [Karma and Amy] won’t do things because of things that have happened… Karma will always act out of impulse and their best friendship. She wants to do everything that she can to keep them as friends and have no one else take Amy away from her. But they don’t throw things in each other’s faces anymore this season. It’s not like, “Well, you did this and you did this.” The arguing is done. It’s more that they’ve learned from their mistakes, and they want to do whatever they can to have their friendship survive.

A few weeks ago in her interview with Vashti, she was accused of not being as straight as she thinks. How did you approach playing that?
I played it because I actually get that in real life. Because I play a lesbian, or a fake lesbian on television, I’ll have people comment under my photos when I post a photo of me and my boyfriend or be with anybody of the opposite sex. People underneath will comment and say, “You know you’re a lesbian.” You know, these things are kind of like, “Excuse me?” I’m a little caught off guard. I think for her, it was more so her realizing, “Anything I say, my words can be misconstrued.” So for Karma it’s a little being caught off guard, but then also knowing that anything she says is going to be taken out of context and flipped around to kind of get her in a bad light. That’s was definitely why she ended the interview. But we also need to hint at the fact that maybe she just doesn’t know what her love for Amy is just yet. I don’t even think the writers know yet what they’re gonna do, if they’re gonna have Karma be bisexual, or if they’re gonna just focus on Amy and Karma’s relationship as friends. I know the rest of this season is based on their friendship and trying to get their friendship back to a good place.

Her parents just came out as polyamorous last episode. How is she feeling abut that now?
We all joke. We’re like, “Karma’s parents are so fun but they’re terrible parents.” [Laughs] Your child tells you how uncomfortable they are with you having a third person in your relationship and you’re like, “Uh, well, that’s something that you told us but we’re going to keep doing it.” She’s definitely uncomfortable. I think you can see that. She said it at the end of last episode. She definitely doesn’t like Diane, but I think it’s a comical situation. Karma reacts just as anyone else would if their parents were like, “Hey, we have a girlfriend.”

Will we see more of her and Diane trying to get to know each other?
You’ll see Diane again this season. I hope if we get another season that they bring her back. I was a huge What I Like About You fan. When Leslie Grossman came to be part of our cast, I was such a fangirl. She’s so amazing, and she’s so fun and funny to work with. I hope they bring that back. We have another scene together and you’ll get Karma’s discomfort towards it all.

Might Karma get a new love interest this season?
Yeah, all of the characters will have love interests this season. There’s also, a new character that comes in between Karma and Amy, that is a friend from when they were 12 at summer camp. They appear to be the three amigos, but behind Amy’s back, Sabrina and Karma don’t really get along. But for Amy’s sake they try to play that they do… I’m excited for when people meet Sabrina because she’s going to be a pivotal point of the rest of the season. She’s going to come in at the end of tonight’s episode.

Speaking of friendship, how are Shane and Karma doing? Are they going to continue with the band?
You can tell at the end of Episode 4 when they got into that huge fight that Shane realized he’d messed up choosing a boy over his friendship. They’re definitely going to continue with the band and their friendship and helping each other through relationship things and all of that. This season, for all the characters, is about learning from their mistakes. A lot of times we just see them make bad decisions and not really learn from them. But this season is them all growing as people.

Lauren clearly has a problem with Karma this season. Will we ever see them talk about it?
Bailey and I were like, “Oh, they’re making us fight so much, we have to wind up having a scene where it’s just the two of us to kind of hash it out.” [But] we don’t wind up having that this season. I can’t spoil anything, but there’s going to be something that happens, that if we get another season… I think it’ll have to come to fruition, but Karma and Lauren have to kind of sit with one another and hash things out.

What is Hester like during Halloween? Because Hester is definitely not a typical high school by any means.
When we write the show, we like to kind of catch on things that are happening in this day and age. There’s all this cultural appropriation and all of those things going on in the real world, so we kind of touch on that. Principal Penelope is very, just always aware of everyone’s feelings and having everyone’s feelings not get hurt. In terms of people’s costumes, when they show up with costumes that she feels are inappropriate, she has a costume room where there are pre-approved costumes people are allowed to change into if they show up in a costume that’s not fitting.

Faking It, Tuesdays, 10:30/9:30c, MTV.