The ‘America’s Got Talent’ Winner Finds Her Own Voice Through New Music and ‘Megalopolis’ Role, Even If it Pushes Boundaries and Makes People Uncomfortable | Entertainment

Eight years after Grace VanderWaal gained “America’s Got Talent,” folks nonetheless see her because the bashful 12-year-old lady from Kansas who floored everybody along with her ukulele-playing and contemplative songs.

“I had the weirdest experience recently,” VanderWaal, now 20, tells Variety over Zoom from L.A., the blunt bangs of her tween years changed by a smooth platinum bob. She recounts how, on an evening out with pals, she crossed paths with a girl popping out of the toilet.

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“She was like, ‘You’re a woman! You’re a grown-up!’” VanderWaal says, mimicking the tipsy fan’s shock. “I was like literally gentle-parenting her through this, but she wouldn’t get over it. She couldn’t handle it.”

Lately, VanderWaal has been operating into that form of response — followers who can’t cease seeing her as an emblem of the purity and innocence of youth — loads, regardless that she’s lengthy since shed the ukulele and her pixie-girl picture.

“I’ve been so afraid to shatter that dream for people,” she says. “But like, I want you to ask yourself, why do you feel personally affected? It is really sad, but it’s been very liberating to reclaim that for myself.”

After profitable “America’s Got Talent,” VanderWaal launched her debut EP, “Perfectly Imperfect,” which turned the bestselling EP of 2016. Her first album, 2017’s “Just the Beginning,” constructed on the folky ukulele-driven sound that captivated America. But within the years since, VanderWaal has been breaking out of that mildew, releasing a string of singles which have proven an edgier facet, with extra difficult manufacturing.

Now VanderWaal is gearing as much as launch her second full-length album, and perhaps the primary that has felt really consultant of who she is. This 12 months, she signed with Pulse Records, and started pushing the venture in a “conceptual” path — one she teases will take followers abruptly.

“It’s definitely going to upset people and make people really uncomfortable,” she says of the album (whose title and launch date are but to be revealed). “I’m talking about some pretty serious and heavy topics, which isn’t super mainstream sellable.”

She says she pitched the album a number of locations and “scared a lot of grown men” within the course of. Pulse was the one label that didn’t again away from her concepts.

“I was saying crazy shit and Pulse is just like, ‘Oh, we love it! Yes!’” she says. “They were genuinely like, ‘Yeah, let’s freak people out together.’”

For the primary single, VanderWaal selected a observe that might make for “a nice, gentle reintroduction.” “Call It What You Want” — a grunge-tinged guitar-pop quantity that debuted Aug. 16 — is just a little tamer than the remainder of the report. “We were like, let’s not throw people over the edge,” she says.

But her newest launch, the anthemic ballad “What’s Left of Me,” out now, hints on the album’s darker themes as VanderWaal chews over a life-changing breakup.

“I really wanted to depict this very specific feeling of, not even sadness, but this disgust of this person,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you changed me and you made the woman that I am, but you don’t deserve that.’”

Lately, artwork has additionally imitated life on-screen. After main Disney’s 2020 “Stargirl” teen film and its sequel, VanderWaal does a 180 by enjoying Vesta Sweetwater — a virginal pop star who will get snagged in a deep-fake intercourse scandal — in Francis Ford Coppola’s forthcoming “Megalopolis.” As Vesta, VanderWaal performs a healthful authentic music throughout a key scene earlier than it all comes crashing down — inflicting her to provoke a profession rebrand.

Coppola had been monitoring VanderWaal’s profession for years, and when “Megalopolis” lastly bought off the bottom, he seemed her up. At their assembly, he instructed VanderWaal in regards to the venture and her character, whom she “definitely connected” to. He supplied her the job — which included writing two songs for the movie — on the spot.

“It was just so collaborative, and I was shocked,” she says of working with the director. “You’d think Francis Ford Coppola, at his stature — I would never, ever anticipate the experience that I had. He truly just wanted to follow the art and what was best for the movie.”

So a lot in order that VanderWaal had a big hand in shaping her character, “almost to the point where I was like, ‘I need to not abuse this power,’” she says.

“I obviously had some personal investment in her, but I also saw her more of like a caricature of the trope that I also participated in,” VanderWaal provides.

Although she got here away from “Megalopolis” with “lots of good and crazy memories,” VanderWaal is preserving music her important focus.

“I don’t think I would ever do anything just for a check or to be on-screen,” she says. “Honey, I spent my whole childhood on-screen.”

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