There’s no better acting school than being thrust into a cast full of performers on fire, and newcomer Sophie Mudd knows it. “I want Lily-Rose Depp to give me acting lessons,” the Instagram superstar says of her The Idol co-star on a bright LA afternoon. “She’s just so free spirited, so sure of herself, and confident in her character. It was so beautiful to watch her process.”
The Lily-Rose Depp School of Acting was definitely in session on the set of The Idol. In HBO and A24’s controversy-courting show, she plays one of the many artists and outlaws under Tedros Tedros’ spell. But Sophie doesn’t need lessons on charisma and drive. There’s a reason she finds herself at the precipice of a new moment in her career, and it all comes down to her ability to draw in a crowd and keep them in the palm of her hand. After all, that’s how she got here in the first place.
She seems like a natural fit for a rise to stardom, but Sophie is still full of surprises. A born and bred Los Angelean, she grew up in West Hollywood and dreamed of working in neuroscience one day. “I was really interested in how the brain worked,” she says. The ambition led her to Santa Monica College, where she pursued her studies while working at a branch of Brandy Melville. Her plan was to transfer to the University of Southern California with the right grades, where she could study neuropsychology in a top-notch setting. But the internet had other plans.
“I was going to school, and I got a DM from Frankie’s Bikinis saying, ‘We’d love to use you for a photo shoot for our Instagram’,” she recalls. She said yes; at the time, Sophie had a thousand followers on Instagram. “I gained a hundred thousand followers from the shoot, which was absolutely insane to me.” She calls the job “super easy”; the aftermath “the weirdest thing ever, totally unexpected.”
Sophie caught the social media bug from there. With the help of her boyfriend, who shot her photos during breaks at a designer clothing warehouse the pair worked at post-Brandy Melville, she began filling up her social presence with their efforts. She was dressing for the job she wanted, and was doing it well. Brands started calling; her follower count rose. “We were like, ‘Oh shit, this could really be a business,” she recalls, “and it’s fun at the same time.”
In 2018, she was approached to model for Yeezy in their Paris and New York Fashion Week showrooms — a major career boost that led her to drop out of school altogether to pursue it. She was in the spotlight in a big way, with over two million Instagram followers and another 650,000 plus on Twitter.
Fast forward a few years to production of The Idol, and Sophie has cemented herself in the world of celebrity in a real, tangible way. Originally joining the cast of the show as an extra, she soon made friends with the actors that make up Tedros’ bizarre artistic cult. Quickly, she was brought in to become one of them herself, based on the way she naturally fit in with the group as filming progressed. “I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” she says. “It’s so cool that this worked out the way that it did. I found through this process that I really love acting, and it’s something that I want to pursue more.”
Between the improvisations and directions given on set, she was a logical addition to the dynamic being built for one of the most sinister and sad elements of the show: the villain’s harem of self-flagellating victims. Her role ended up expanding further still. Her character becomes a crucial part of one of Tedros’ schemes that kick off in episode four.
There’s no doubt that this role will open doors for her, and Sophie’s ready to meet the moment head on no matter what happens — especially from an acting perspective. “Working on a horror movie would be really cool,” she says, thinking about her future plans. “I’m taking as many acting classes as possible and just really focusing on my craft. I don’t want to place myself in a certain box. I’m really open to doing whatever comes my way.”
“For me, it was never really about making money… and then I happen to make money doing what I love,” she says. “That’s why I say I’m so lucky.” With the world starting to take note of Sophie Mudd, it feels as though the novelty of the newness may never wear off. She’s a soon-to-be sensation with a lot more major firsts in her future.
Credits
Photography Sam Hellmann