Elle – The ‘Shadowhunters’ and ‘Arrow’ alum on tackling Stephen King and making movies in quarantine.

Kat McNamara did not spend 2020 learning to crochet or baking banana bread over and over and over again. Instead, the 25-year-old actress filmed a horror movie from home, started development on a YA adaptation, appeared at virtual fan conventions, and plotted where her career goes next as she looks to explore what she calls “new avenues of her psyche.”

But the pandemic escapes no one, so we’re meeting over Zoom. “I have tried to make the best of it, being the stubborn optimist I am,” she laughs as we both admit 2020 was not the year either of us planned for.

But 2021 is looking bright, as the 25-year-old stars in the CBS All Access adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, a prescient work by the master of horror that follows a group of survivors after a deadly man-made virus ravages the world.

McNamara stars as Julie Lawry, a small-town girl with a wild side who finds herself susceptible to the call of Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), the mysterious and supernatural ’dark man’ who serves as the show’s chief antagonist. It is, perhaps, the role most unlike herself McNamara has played thus far.

“It was an exciting prospect because I get to be a chameleon and transform,” McNamara says, “but the ways in which Julie is different to me make me uncomfortable—the language she uses, the stigmas she holds, are just not okay. But because it’s Stephen King there’s not much you can really change about it, so it was a process of turning it into something good.”

Julie, says McNamara, is “probably the worst example of who to be.” Self-absorbed and ignorant, the character pressures men for sex and mocks those she believes are less fortunate than herself.

“This past year we’ve had the time to look back at society and the stigmas and habits we’ve fallen into and confront [them] and hold ourselves and others accountable for the ways we treat other people,” McNamara says. She hopes to use the show as “an opportunity to guide people towards the right resources” as further episodes air.

CBS risked the wrath of King fans when they confirmed the ending of the show would be different from the book, and with two fandoms under McNamara’s belt—and more than five million followers on social media—she knows better than anyone how perilous that can be.

In 2015, the Kansas City-born actress’s world changed forever when she was cast as Clary Fray in the Freeform series Shadowhunters, based on a series of young adult books with a passionate built-in fanbase. Hours before her casting was announced, “Who is Clary?” was trending on Twitter.