Warning: This article contains spoilers from Boo, Bitch. 

When we first meet Boo, Bitch BFFs Gia (Zoe Colletti) and Erika (Lana Condor), they’re in the final stretch of their high school careers, with prom right around the corner. Instead of feeling celebratory, though, they’re bummed to find out that there’s a senior text chain they’re not on. So what do they do to make sure their last few school days are as epic as possible? Decide to start living by the YOLO code till the day they graduate. They want to leave a legacy, be remembered — and that won’t happen if they just stay home.

But Gia and Erika’s big plans change the morning after they attend their first big party. Instead of a hangover, they wake up and discover that one of them is dead. But which one? At first, it appears to be Erika, whose shoes are lying underneath a moose à la the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. But — plot twist — it’s actually Gia who’s been boo, bitched this whole time. Gia knows she’s dead but has kept it a secret in order to inspire Erika to live fearlessly for the first time in her life. 

While Erika is centered throughout the show — rising in fame and popularity (and ego) — it’s Gia who is the show’s moral compass, always supporting her bestie (and doing it in an outfit Lizzie McGuire only wishes had been in her closet). Gia’s focus is always bringing Erika back to earth, even as she’s slipping away from it. 

Below, we talk with Gia herself, Boo, Bitch star Zoe Colletti, all about what it was like bringing this MVP best friend to life, even though she’s a ghost.

How do you think you’d react if this happened to you? Oh my God, to be honest, I feel like I would just go out of my mind. I would be so sad! I would like to think I’d be the type of person to be like, “I’m crossing everything off of my bucket list, and I’m going to get so many things done,” but I feel like I would just be really sad and crawl into bed and just be depressed. I’d be like, “Well, it’s done. It’s over for me folks. That’s all.”

On that note, what do you think your unfinished business would be? My family’s always so spread apart and all over the place. I would just want to force them together, all in one place. So we could just spend some time together, and then I’d be like, “OK, bye.”

As we know, Gia’s unfinished business is to make sure Erika is going to be OK. And Gia also wants to go to the prom with her medium of a beau, Gavin [Tenzing Norgay Trainor]. Did you go to your prom?  Oh my gosh. This is the most traumatic thing ever. I didn’t get to go to my prom. I was working. I was so desperate to go to prom. I was working on a different job later on, and I was asking crew members if they had any relatives in high school that would take me to their prom. I could not get to a prom. And I never did. So filming Boo, Bitch was my first prom, which was spectacular.

Did you have something you wanted to wear?  During COVID, [when] we were all in lockdown... I came home one day — I had bought a prom dress already — and my mom had cleared our entire apartment we were staying in and just decorated the whole house and set up an entire prom and did a whole meal at a fancy table. She did, like, dancing with me and my boyfriend and set all of it up. It was really cute. He had a whole suit on. They both planned it for me while we were in quarantine, so I could get my senior prom. Props to my mom for doing that. 

And I did have a very cute dress. It was the first dress I tried on. It was a corset top that was grayish blue. And it was tulle, and it had all these gold flowers on it, and it had little tulle bows on the shoulders.

When you signed on for the show, did you know the twist about Gia? I found out before I booked the role, but I didn’t know initially when I auditioned. I did multiple auditions for it. I started to get super drawn to the script, just because it’s a supercute story. I felt like I had a good connection with Gia, in general. I have some similarities to her, and I thought she was going to be a fun character to get to play. Before my final audition, when I had gone through all the processes, [showrunners] Lauren [Iungerich] and Erin [Ehrlich] did give me a call to fill me in on what actually happened, which was like, “Oh my god, that’s insane.” I think it’s such a great twist, [and knowing about] it was super helpful because it changed a lot of how I would deliver the lines.

Yeah, like telling Erika to wear earbuds when they talk because otherwise she’d look like she wasn’t talking to anyone! Did you have a favorite acronym that Gia says, or do you say any now in your own life? First of all, I despise doing those long acronyms. They were so stressful. I could never remember them. They’re like 19 miles long. I swear there are some of them that were the length of the entire alphabet. It was insanity. And just having it looming over your head in a scene, knowing, “This is coming and I’m going to mess up the entire scene because I’m not going to remember all of those letters.”

It’s funny, because my boyfriend was my reader when I did my audition, and in one scene we go, “TBBH.” And [now], me and my boyfriend say “TBBH” all the time — “to be brutally honest.” I say that to my boyfriend to let him down easy — you know, like, “To be brutally honest, you suck.”

What drew you to Gia and resonated with you about her character? I would say my kind of goofy side. I would like to think that I’m a little bit less awkward, maybe a little bit cooler than her, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little too similar to her in that way. On a more heartfelt note, she’s such a loyal friend and somebody that cares so much about her friends and her family and just making sure that she’s thinking about other people before herself and doing things for her friends and family that will benefit them, even if it’s hard for her. I do really try to prioritize other people’s feelings or what they want or need before I do something selfish.

Erika and Gia's Cutest BFF Moments in 'Boo, Bitch'Friends to the end–literally.

Even though Gia’s the one who’s dead, she doesn’t tell Erika, because she doesn’t want her friend to stop living her best life. It’s a very selfless thing to do, even though it’s a really tricky situation. Gia and Erika’s friendship is the love story of the show. So how did you and Lana bond off-screen to make it feel so lived in on-screen? We met on a chemistry read that I had, but it was over Zoom, which was incredibly difficult and impersonal — [it’s] so difficult to read energy through the computer. But I ended up booking the job, and we met for the first time at our first rehearsal that we had. And literally from the first time we met, we instantly clicked. So the chemistry that we have on-screen is totally natural. It’s not often that you stay close and connected to people that you work with, and we actually have stayed connected. She’s super, super special.

What do you think makes for a great best friend, and have you ever had to bring a friend back down earth like Gia does... as she’s literally floating away from it? Being willing to be there for them for whatever they need — not just doing things for them, but also just being somebody who’ll listen if your friend needs to talk to you. It’s so important that it’s someone you have fun with and have a similar sense of humor to, and you can just blow off steam and be with them. For a best friend, I feel like you almost have to view them how you view family. Like, you might get cranky at each other. You might get into an argument. You might have the best day ever. But, at the end of the day, you’re always going to choose to be with each other. I can’t say that I had to ever pull somebody back down to earth [like Gia does with Erika], but I definitely had times where I had to be like, “You’re not being nice, please don’t do that to me. You’re hurting my feelings,” which is terrible for me because I’m the least confrontational person and hate having to do that. But sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and be like, “You’re being rude to people around you.” 

Erika and Gia have their matching arrow necklaces. Have you ever gotten matching jewelry with a friend? Of course I have! Not in a long while, but I used to shop at Justice, and they’d always have those little, really tacky, best-friend necklaces that I would get with my friend when I was young. But my mom really is my best friend, and we do have little matching bow rings. [They’re] these little silver rings that have a little bow on them, and she actually just got it for me a few weeks ago.

What do you imagine Gia is up to in the afterlife? Probably just hanging out. I mean, it really depends on what the depiction of the afterlife is in this Boo, Bitch universe. I would hope she’s vibing and having fun, meeting new people. Maybe she’s a little bit more lively in the afterlife than she was when she was alive, considering she kind of didn’t really get up to much. So I [hope] she took a bit of her own tips in the afterlife and made some new friends. I hope that she can still talk to Erika. Maybe she can even still talk to Gavin.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.