April Brinson (left) and Violet Brinson (right) / Photo Credit: Benjo Arwas

The HBO miniseries Sharp Objects has been growing in popularity since it premiered in July. A murder mystery based on the novel Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, the show features Amy Adams as reporter Camille Preaker who has returned to her hometown to solve the disappearance of two girls. But, this show isn’t all about our favorite celebrities. Two of the 8-part series’ major characters are played by stars-on-the-rise April and Violet Brinson. We got to talk to April and Violet about their characters Jodes and Kelsey and what it’s like to be a sibling acting duo.

In Sharp Objects, April plays Jodes, a sensitive girl who is often the subject of her friends’ jokes. Violet plays Kelsey, the more confident leader of the two. These two are best friends and two-thirds of a trouble-making group of girls. Together with their friend Amma, played by Eliza Scanlen, they roller skate around the town of Wind Gap getting into trouble. Unlike their characters, April and Violet aren’t rule-breakers. To relate to their characters, they had to tap into more subtle elements of their personalities like reactions to peer pressure and April’s understanding of what it’s like to be the underdog in a friend group. “We’re definitely not troublemakers, but it was nice to get to be a troublemaker whenever we were on set,” Violet said about the experience.

“It’s an incredible experience, and you learn so much, and it’s really inspiring,” April said about working with stars like Amy Adams that they looked up to growing up. Both girls felt like they gained so much as actresses by working with them. Sharp Objects was April and Violet’s first experience with a production of this size, so they were excited to learn from their co-stars, but they also leaned on their bond as sister’s to strengthen their characters. They never thought their joint passion for acting would bring them together on the same set, but working together gave them constant access to someone they could go over lines and develop their characters with. “She’s like a buddy I can experience this huge and amazing thing with,” Violet said about working with April.

“It’s beyond our wildest dreams.” – APRIL Brinson

That didn’t mean playing their roles on the show was easy. Even though Jodes and Kelsey are best friends, they aren’t the nicest to one another. Being so close in real life, this made developing distance between their characters difficult for April and Violet. But they managed to work out a system that worked for them both. “We were really open about it when we were at home and we talked about it a lot,” April said about their character dynamics. “And we practiced beforehand so we were making sure not to hurt each other’s feelings or step on each other’s toes.”

Violet Brinson (left) and April Brinson (right) / Photo Credit: Benjo Arwas

It was also this bond that helped April and Violet begin their acting careers. When they were younger, the sisters decided to take an acting class together and fell in love with the craft. Now, they know that acting is what they want to do for the rest of their lives whether it is on stage or on screen. It wasn’t acting classes that first taught them how to play pretend, though. The girls remember playing imaginative games and imitating their very animated step-grandmother when they were young, and they both think that it was this early love of imagining and imitating that later sparked their love of acting.

The finale of Sharp Objects is quickly approaching, so you’ve probably watched Jodes’ and Kelsey’s characters develop, but if you haven’t, April and Violet encourage viewers to pay close attention to the things their characters reveal as the series progresses.
Sharp Objects ends on August 26, and while neither April or Violet have any projects that they can tell us about just yet, they have been auditioning a lot since they finished up filming, and we will definitely be hearing more from them soon.

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Veronica Good has been with Showstopper Magazine since 2016. When she isn't keeping you updated on the latest trends, she is at home with her many pets or probably playing The Sims 4. Veronica has a BA in English and an MA in writing from Coastal Carolina University. She is also a writer of fiction and poetry, and her work can be found in Archarios, Tempo, and Scapegoat.