THE LAST SHOWGIRL Star Kiernan Shipka is COSMOPOLITAN’s Latest Digital Cover Star!

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Kiernan Shipka has been laser-focused on work since she was a child star on MAD MEN, emerging as the rare walking portrait of a child star who got it “right.” Now, after releasing five movies just this year, she is ready for something else: Long nights out and not taking herself too seriously. In COMSOPOLITAN’s latest digital cover story, the 25-year-old opens up about her “most fun era,” her first crush, why she doesn’t reveal who she’s dating, and more.  

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On what a wild night looks like for her right now: “I do this when I come to New York. I have no brakes when I’m here…. I texted everyone. I was getting dinner with three people, which turned into four people, and then we added a fifth and before we knew it, we were in the lobby of the hotel until 4 a.m. It was all conversation-based. It wasn’t wild in the sense of, Oh my god, we’re doing these crazy things, but I felt social in a way that was really fun…. There’s a particular sense of joy in having a fun and interesting day that turns into a different kind of fun and interesting night.”

On having a lot of fun lately: “I’m in the most fun era of my life. I have been thinking more about my 20s and having fun and being present and how that relates to my work but also how it relates to me as a person. I’ve always erred on the side of control and perfectionism, and those things caused too much unnecessary anxiety. There was an active choice to go, Oh, I want to untether from these things. I found the coolest group in my 20s who I can be myself around and feel seen by and just get really silly with. Getting silly is so important…dare I say, vital.”

On getting to know her Mad Men costars as adults: “If you told my 7-year-old self she would be getting a drink with January, oh my god, I would flip out. I idolized her in a way where she was absolutely everything to me. It’s a really nice part of growing up in this business, getting to have conversations with people now as adults. There’s something poignant about it. It feels peer-to-peer. I’ve gotten to know Christina Hendricks more than I ever knew her filming because we maybe had two scenes together. To know her and get to know these people in a way that is even closer and more real, it’s nice. There’s always going to be something a little bit funny about running into Jon Hamm at a party, but it’s great.”

On being a Mad Men child star: “It touches me because I feel like I was never really robbed of my innocence in any way. I just got to be Sally and grow up with her in a way that never felt like she was learning too much before me. She did get her period before I did though…. I was like, ‘Is this what it’s going to be like??’ I remember it feeling like a trial run. I was a little scared, but it was still fun. Anytime I got to do anything on that show, I was excited.”

On working with Pamela Anderson: “She showed up every day so fearless and raw, and it was this ripple effect. Everyone felt like they wanted to do such honest work because she set the tone. There were little moments in it where we were not even dressed yet, and a PA would run in and be like, ‘Oh my god, Pam’s in this incredible space. We need you guys to go change right now for the next scene.’”

On how she prepared for her dancing scenes in The Last Showgirl: “I was really at it, trying to get those splits for a month and a half. The second I knew I was going to do it, that was the first thing I was prepping, just flopping down into the splits and holding them every day. I was so rusty. I was the type of kid who did the splits in a second and was like, ‘What’s wrong with you guys, you can’t do it? This is the easiest thing in the world.’ And now I’m like, ‘How dare you say that, Kiernan? It is so hard.’ The shoot kept you on your toes in an amazing way and I really learned the value of not expecting anything. I also learned a lot from the level of stripped-bare that Pam made herself. The whole shoot had a very magical quality to it.”

On dating and setting boundaries around what she shares with the public: “I’ve always had a healthy relationship with dating, but I’ve spent so much of my life in the public eye in one way or another, I’ve figured out that I need to set a boundary for myself and not talk about it. I’ve found what works for me right now is figuring out what part of myself and my life I can keep for myself and what I can give the world, and I think drawing those lines has been something I’ve been thinking about more as I get older.”

On how she deals with the celebrity rumor mill: “Not taking it too seriously is my honest answer. I know what comes with the territory. Being public-facing, there’s going to be discourse about you in multiple different directions. It’s knowing how to not internalize certain things that aren’t going to make your day better. It might be something I’ve built up and calloused over time just because I’ve been doing this for 18 and a half years now. And I’m not perfect, by the way. Some stuff still can get in there, but I think I just don’t pay too much mind to things that aren’t really happening in my real life. I love my friends, I love the relationships I have in my life, and I love what I do. My real life is so good that the other stuff is funny, but I don’t really think about it. I also have a pretty clear, ‘Kiernan, don’t google yourself’ boundary.”

On the chance of her reprising her Sally or Sabrina roles: “With my TV girls, with Sally and Sabrina, I always have this tiny little light and tiny little piece of hope that maybe one day I’ll get to visit them. There’s this level of not wanting to say goodbye to characters I grew really deeply close to, on the level where I don’t know where I end and they begin.”

On being together with the Sabrina cast as they mourned the loss of their costar Chance Perdomo: “I saw more people than I had in a long time, and it was heartbreaking. It was a reminder of how close that cast was and how much love there was on that set. Even if we don’t see each other all the time, there’s a level of love that pulsated through that whole set. It’s not been lost.”

On her childhood crush, Cole Sprouse: “I had a poster of the Sprouse twins on my wall that I may or may not have kissed… I met Cole through Riverdale. I remember when Sabrina was announced, he reached out. Vancouver’s pretty small, so all the shows shooting there kind of overlapped in hangouts and we got to know each other. Cole I know now. Cole…we’re locked in. Cole is a buddy and Dylan’s a buddy, so maybe I was doing some version of manifesting at 6. Who knows?”

On a recent bucket-list-worthy moment, doing shots with Venus Williams: “I famously don’t do shots—I’d rather have a drink, and if someone gives me a shot, I’m going to just toss it—but Venus was like, ‘We’re doing shots.’ And I said, ‘Of course we are.’ I broke my rule. I don’t think Serena was partaking, but Venus was. My body’s still reacting to the fact that happened, one of the cooler moments of life. And she asked for the glasses to be chilled. It was so elegant. So sexy. Honestly, that’s the only way I want to do them now.”

[Photo Credit: Marie Tomanova for Cosmopolitan Magazine – Video Credit: Cosmopolitan/YouTube]

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