Miranda Cosgrove rose to fame in the 2000s as Nickelodeon‘s resident funny girl. She captured the hearts of beloved fans with her witty one-liners, hilarious pranks and adventurous storylines in Drake & Josh from 2001-2006 — until she took her comical talents to her own show, iCarly from 2007-2012. Now, the 26-year-old actress peels back her comedy layers to expose her more serious side in the new sci-fi film, 3022, which hit theaters on November 22. She plays Lisa Brown, an astronaut and technology wizard, who joins her few colleagues on board a spacecraft for mission gone terribly wrong.
The new space film follows a group of astronauts living in the haunting emptiness of deep space on a 10-year mission. Halfway through their journey, the group starts to struggle with their mental health and are overcome by the isolation of space. While they prepare for the latter half of their journey, the astronauts discover that planet earth is hit by a catastrophic event — extinction. They will have to band together to fight and survive against unforeseen threats in 3022, which stars leads, Kate Walsh and Omar Epps.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Miranda admitted of her shift from comedy to sci-fi during an exclusive interview with HollywoodLife. “I’m used to being on more TV shows where it’s usually all about just making people laugh, which is a blast and I love doing comedy — but this definitely just a totally different experience. I think that definitely drew me to the film just because I wanted to try something totally different,” she said, noting that she was hooked on the John Suits-directed film as soon as she got her hands on the script.
“I read the script, and for two or three days I was thinking just what that would be like to be alive but to know that the earth didn’t exist anymore. I had never really thought about that before. I had never thought what would it be like,” she said, recalling, “I thought beforehand, ‘Oh, what if the world came to an end.’ But, I never thought, ‘What if you were still alive somewhere else and you just found out the world didn’t exist.'”
Then, Miranda tried to put herself in the position of her character, Lisa.
“I’d be in denial,” she confessed if Lisa’s fate were her own in real life. “I just think it’d be hard to even want to go on if you didn’t have your family and all the people you love,” Miranda continued, explaining, “And, I liked that part of the movie for sure. — That message is just that I feel really matters — having friends and family and people to care about, that’s really the point of everything.”
Despite the frightening plot of the thriller, Miranda went on to discuss how fun the dynamic was on set because of the film’s small cast.
“It was really fun. I mean, mainly there are four people in the film, so it was really just us for most of filming. I think it was really cool to be on a set where it was really just all about the acting and the relationships between the characters,” she said, noting that working with Kate and Omar was nothing short of exceptional.
“It was exciting to get to work with them because you can tell that they get into their characters. They love acting so much and they came to set everyday completely immersed in their roles,” Miranda gushed about her co-stars. It was fun to watch during scenes I wasn’t a part of… I’d just stand on set and get to watch them for fun.”
3022 is in theaters now. The film is also available on demand and digital.