Source: Entertainment Weekly

Mandy Moore is reflecting on a formative teen experience.

The Breadwinner actress discussed her memories of filming the cult 2004 teen comedy Saved during an interview with Evan Ross Katz on his show Shut Up Evan.

“I’d really just done Princess Diaries and A Walk to Remember, and I was like, ‘This will be a fun,'” she recalled of being offered the role of Hilary Faye Stockard in the film at age 18. “And the fact that I’d had so much fun doing both of those films, namely Princess Diaries, because it was with a lot of other young people — I was like, ‘Oh, this is like summer camp!'”

Saved follows a group of teens at a Christian high school, and also stars Jena Malone, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit, and Eva Amurri. Moore said that spending so much time with this “group of really incredible young actors” was extremely impactful.

“I felt like a cool kid,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I get to sit at the cool kids table with these young Hollywood kids that are making really cool choices, and they’re a part of really great films.”

Moore said that she and her castmates didn’t get up to much trouble when they all stayed in the same hotel in Vancouver during production. “I distinctly remember the sweet, innocent — like, we would take giant marshmallows and throw them at people off the balcony,” she said. “We were kids! We weren’t really getting up to no good.”

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However, the This Is Us actress admitted that she and her costars partook in an alcoholic beverage or two despite being under the legal drinking age of 19 in British Columbia.

“I do remember a little bit of underage drinking,” she said. “As it happened, I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t go to high school.’ I was 18.”

Moore also said that Culkin, who was the oldest of the bunch and could legally drink in Canada, turned her onto a drink that she particularly took to: “I think it was Mac, Macaulay, that introduced me and all of us to a White Russian,” she said. “I was like, ‘Milk and alcohol? This is made for me, I love this! This is like ice cream, this is fantastic!'”

The actress looks back on Saved with fondness.

“It was a crazy, crazy life-changing experience,” she reflected. “I just loved the script and the character, and I thought it was really irreverent and funny, and also like gonna move the needle. But it also felt so wholly different than who I am that I was like, ‘Oh this is a stretch, and this is unlike anything I’ve done before. So hopefully, very intentionally, this’ll open up a door to other projects,’ like people regarding me in a different light.”