'The Edge Of Seventeen' YouTube Series Casts 'Hunger Games' Star As Its Lead

By Hoai-Tran BuiDec. 6, 2018 5:30 am EST

YouTube's The Edge of Seventeen series has found its lead. Hunger Games star Isabelle Fuhrmann will take on the role of the awkward teen girl originated by Hailee Steinfeld in the 2016 coming-of-age fim. Joining Fuhrmann in The Edge of Seventeen YouTube series cast is Liana Liberato (Hulu's Light as a Feather), who will play the best friend, Lou.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that The Edge of Seventeen YouTube series has found its lead in Isabelle Fuhrmann, best known for her role as the psychotic Clove in 2012's The Hunger Games and as the sinister Esther in the 2009 horror flick Orphan. She'll be playing the role of Mira, a high school student whose character is loosely based on the character that earned Steinfeld a Golden Globe nomination for 2016's The Edge of Seventeen.

Here's the character description for Fuhrmann's Mira, whose name is different than Steinfeld's Nadine:

"Mira is a whip-smart underachiever trying to survive high school until the moment she can escape her hometown and loving, but messy, family. Socially, she's a floater, along with her best friend Lou. A clique of two. But when things start to shift in their friendship, Mira will have to search her world for other connections to help her endure her seemingly endless adolescence."

Like Steinfeld's Nadine, Furhmann's character sound destructive and impulsive, though Liberator's Lou seems to be slightly different from the character played by Haley Lu Richardson in the original. We don't learn much about Richardson's Krista apart from her charming quirks that attracts both Nadine and Nadine's brother to her. But "Lou" in The Edge of Seventeen series seems more fleshed out, according to THR's description:

"Liberato's Lou is described as smart, dry, introverted and way overachieving. Her family is religious, but lately Lou is having trouble reconciling her faith with her impulses. Still, while her older brother is rebelling, she feels pressure to be the "good kid." Her only rebellion to date is being friends with the fun and impulsive Mira, who brings out a darker, funnier side of her that no one else knows."

Both versions of The Edge of Seventeen follow awkward high school girl who with her best friend navigates "the relationships, feelings, and realities of being teenage girls," but that seems to be where the similarities end for this TV iteration. But Fuhrman is a promising lead star who stunned early on in Orphan, convincingly playing a creepy and psychotic character. She hasn't had many changes to venture beyond that niche (she was typecast as psychotic again in Hunger Games), but The Edge of Seventeen seems like a good series for her to test her range.

Penned by Annabel Oakes (Transparent, Atypical), the series is only loosely based off the brilliant 2016 film, though Edge of Seventeen feature writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig is attached to executive produce the YouTube series.

Production for The Edge of Seventeen series is set to begin in January in Los Angeles.