Ed Gibbs meets singer turned actress Nikki Webster to discuss her big-screen debut in the Australian teen drama Circle of Lies (Empire Magazine).

NIKKI WEBSTER: V is such a kind of, a full-on character. She’s in the background in terms of she’s a part of this “exclusive” group. She’s very vocal and she’s very strong in who she is. She also loves to throw good parties – she comes from a bit of money from her family’s side. She’s the “money” part of the group, and she doesn’t really fit in, she doesn’t really have a voice but she wants to, and she uses the money, and her mum’s kind of money, to try and buy friends.

NIKKI: It was confronting, and it kind of made me understand what teens go through today a lot more, and I teach a lot of young aspiring artists and to kind of put myself in their shoes, about what goes on at school and how individuality is sometimes crushed upon, and bullying happens, and social media – I mean that wasn’t around when I was at school.

ED GIBBS: You had to grow up in public, in a sense. What was like experience like, copping that flak, that negative reaction, and sort of how do you view that now, looking back?

NIKKI: I guess I tried to do at eighteen, run away from it all, and shut up shop and that was it, and I wanna live somewhere else and I don’t understand how you represent your country one minute – and you’re everybody’s Hero Girl and national treasure – to being slagged off for doing nothing. You know, all I’m doing is making kids’ music. That’s really all I was doing. It was pop, fresh, kiddie music – it was nothing insulting, it was nothing… So it was very hard for me to kinda go, ‘What did I do?’ You know. If we were a little bit more prepared for it then it wouldn’t have hurt so much, but it kind of happened overnight, you know? Everything was good and then it just went bang, and it was like a big shock.

But yeah, it just, I guess it makes me stronger, it makes me more driven to protect Australian talent and to keep everything on home soil. And it makes me driven to, you know make music and – people have opinions, that doesn’t bother me at all. Opinions I don’t care about. People are gonna love it, hate it – it is what it is. But I just wanna keep doing what I’m doing and have that opportunity.

Source: Empire Online