Ciara Bravo is known for her challenging roles. In the past, she played Ellen who battled anorexia in the drama To the Bone. In her latest Russo brothers’ Cherry, she co-stars with Tom Holland in a wild story of crime and drug addiction. The drama is inspired by US Army veteran Nico Walker’s first novel.

Bravo tells HFPA journalist Kristien Gijbels that she went to a rehab facility in Cleveland and talked with the outpatients and employees to understand the personal battle addicts go through. “There was one nurse in particular that I spoke to who had a very, very similar journey to Emily. Her relationship, her job, her life experience, everything. Getting a chance to talk to her and learning more and more about her life and more importantly these little details you just can’t know unless you’ve been through it yourself.”

Bravo’s character, Emily, is like an anchor for Holland’s character Cherry. “She was the reason why he kept making steps forward in life even if those steps forward maybe weren’t leading him down the right path.”

She also found a personal connection to the story. “I myself grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio in the Midwest, which is ground zero for the opioid epidemic, unfortunately, but more so in my personal experience growing up there what I tended to notice was this sort of idea that success was defined through career and through family and if you had that family and you had that career everything else in your life was going to fall into place and you would always be happy. And I saw this character gripping onto this idea and holding onto it with dear life hoping that it would carry her through this incredibly tumultuous journey she was going on.”

The role of Emily was taxing for her. “That definitely took more of a toll on me than I was expecting it to. It is very easy to get caught up in a role that you’re playing. I’m not saying I would ever shoot heroin, of course not, but there’s this mental state that you put yourself into to be able to do these scenes and reach the places that you need to reach, and sometimes it’s hard to take yourself back out of that, especially if you accidentally go too far.”

She learned how important it is to have a support system around herself. “Make sure that you’re making friends on the crew and with other cast members so that you can break yourself free of that and remember who you are as a person and not who you are as the character of Emily.”

Listen to the podcast and hear how she filmed the scenes with needles in CherrySteven Spielberg approved her audition tape and hired her on Red Band SocietyBig Time Rush