Star wrote, produced music for the original ABC Family TV\nmovie<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lie Shia Ong<\/em> Bullying is an issue that many teens have to deal with on a daily basis. In the new ABC Family movie \u201cCyberbully,\u201d premiering on Sunday, July 17, what first starts out as some online fun and games turns into a dangerous and destructive situation. Taylor Hillridge (played by Emily Osment) gets a laptop for her birthday. Still struggling with her parents\u2019 recent divorce, she is excited at the prospect of going online to meet new friends, but when she falls victim to harassment online, Taylor starts withdrawing from her family and her friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The movie \u201cCyberbully\u201d is part of a campaign by ABC\nFamily and Seventeen Magazine to bring awareness to the issue of bullying and\ndigital abuse. The initiative, Delete Digital Drama, launches this summer on\nthe network and in the magazine\u2019s August issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN spoke with Osment about her role in the movie and how\nher music ended up playing a big part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV: What can\nyou tell us about your new movie, \u201cCyberbully\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emily Osment: I\u2019m very excited for this film to come out.\nIt\u2019s been a really long process. It\u2019s nice that it\u2019s finally going to be\nreleased. \u2026 I was very excited when I was first approached with an offer to do\nthis film. \u2026 I love the character, and I love the journey that she takes in\nthis. \u2026 I knew that there was going to be an [anti-bullying] campaign, and I\nknew all the things that Michelle Obama was doing for this, and with Seventeen\nMagazine making a jump on it, it was great knowing that I was going to be doing\nsomething for a good cause as well as doing something that I love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell us a little\nbit more about your character in the movie. You get a laptop for your birthday,\nand things go awry from there, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, that\u2019s definitely the starting point of where things start to go downhill. My character Taylor, she\u2019s very interesting. She already comes from a broken home. She\u2019s extremely insecure, and so I think any little thing could have pushed her over the edge. When she starts being bullied online, she truly does not know how to handle it. I think that it changes her world, and her friends\u2019 world, and leaks around to everyone else around her. She goes from being this normal teenage girl to being suicidal and depressed. She\u2019s very strong at the end, and it was fun to play a character that went through all these emotional leaps. It was kind of terrifying on set sometimes because I had to go through in my brain, ‘OK, where is the character now? What state is she in? What just happened in this scene?’ There was a lot of research and a lot of homework every night. That was one of the cool things about doing this movie is I\u2019ve never worked so hard off set as well as on set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My mom\u2019s a teacher, and [I heard] about her experience at school. She knows bullies personally that she teaches, and she knows how to handle them, and she knows about what they go through, and what the people they bully go through. I talked to her a lot about what she sees at school before I went in. I wasn\u2019t bullied at school. I was taught from a young age that you\u2019re going to have to watch your back, and you have to have humor about everything, and that\u2019s my out usually. I hear something strange, or someone makes a comment, I\u2019ll just kind of make a joke a bout it. That\u2019s my defense and shield against bullying, but not everyone can do that. Everyone has to find their own thick skin. It\u2019s hard to be just like ‘OK, you need better self-esteem. That\u2019s how you deal with a bully.’ You can\u2019t just tell someone that. They have to learn for themselves. They have to find it within themselves to be brave, and that\u2019s what this entire movie is about\u2014is finding courage and finding the strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do you want the\nparents out there to know about this movie, and why they should watch it with their\nkids?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a really good forum for kids and for adults and\nfor the little brother and the baby sitter and the dog and everyone [laughs]. I\nreally think everyone can get something out of this film, especially the kids\nthat are being bullied. I\u2019m already getting comments on Twitter and Myspace \u2026\nkids literally thanking me for doing this film because they say, \u201cNow people\nunderstand what I go through. Everyone thinks it\u2019s not a big deal, and it\u2019s a\nbig deal, and it\u2019s my whole life, and I can\u2019t get away from it.\u201d And this film\ndoes a really good job of putting that all up on a pedestal and saying, \u201cLook\nat me.\u201d This film, it exemplifies everything that a bully goes through and everything\nthat the bulled goes through. We\u2019re just trying to draw attention to a really\ngood cause, and we\u2019re trying to make a difference, and I think this film is going\nto do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know music is\nsomething that\u2019s very important to you, and you sing the song \u201cDrift\u201d that\u2019s featured\nin the movie. Did you write that song for \u201cCyberbully\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote and produced it in about three days. I got a call\nfrom the producer of \u201cCyberbully.\u201d Actually, the director put it in my mind in\nthe first place. We were on set and we had some downtime, and he was like, \u201cLet\nme hear some stuff that you do. Not the pop stuff. Don\u2019t give me the pop stuff.\nGive me the stuff you\u2019ve truly written recently.\u201d So, I played him some things\nthat were a little more jazzy and a little more sexy and a little bit slower,\nand he just fell in love with it. He said, \u201cOh my gosh. Can you please write\nsomething for the film?\u201d \u2026 I ended up taking it all on myself, and I wrote it\nin three days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of your fans\non Twitter wrote and asked if you\u2019re going to be making a music video for \u201cDrift.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a really good question. That\u2019s something I haven\u2019t\neven talked about with a manager. I haven\u2019t even discussed that with anyone. I think\nthat this film and this song are so tied together, I think the movie is truly the\nmusic video for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you know when\nyour new album is going to be released?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t. I know everyone\u2019s been asking when the third album is going to be released. \u2026 I\u2019m doing it myself, so it\u2019s taking a little bit more time, and I\u2019m working on a few other projects right now, but we are going on tour, and we\u2019re playing some shows this month and next month and throughout fall. When I get on tour, that\u2019s when I get most inspired, and that\u2019s when most of the magic happens. I\u2019m learning more about producing myself. I produced [\u201cDrift\u201d] clearly, fast, so it was like a crash course, and I really enjoyed it, so I think I want to find a future in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another one of your\nfans wanted me to ask if you have any plans on going to college soon?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I am. I\u2019m going to college this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where are you enrolled? Do you know what\nyou\u2019re going to major in yet, or is it too early?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, God, I don\u2019t know what freshman knows what they\u2019re going\nto major in [laughs]! I don\u2019t know yet. I have lots of interests, and I have a\nlot of options. It\u2019s a liberal arts school, so they\u2019ll let me kind of do what I\nwant. So, we shall see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there any\nmessage you want to send out to your fans?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Please watch this film. This film I hope will make a\nreally good impact on a lot of people, and it does a really good job of raising\nawareness for this really good cause. Know that your voice is heard, and you\nneed to talk to someone if you\u2019re being bullied, and this film is going to teach\nyou on how to deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCyberbully\u201d\npremieres on Sunday, July 17, at 8 p.m. ET\/PT on ABC Family.<\/em> Star wrote, produced music for the original ABC Family TV movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msn-entertainment","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":869,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
MSN TV<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019d rather not say right now, but I\u2019m staying in California. I feel like that\u2019s a good choice with trying to have a career and also go to school \u2026 but I\u2019m excited, and it\u2019s a school that I love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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