How The Stars Of Trinkets Identify With The Teen Drama's Core Message

"I don’t know, I feel like it’s just something so small however so significant that we just made," Quintessa Swindell says, sitting alongside their Trinkets co-stars Brianna Hildebrand and Kiana Madeira. They were still over a month out from the show’s June 14 Netflix debut, yet spending the day filming marketing promos and talking to MTV News had each person thinking about how things would play out in just a number of short weeks. "I know it’s essential, nevertheless for some reason I just can’t see it."


Its importance isn't entirely unlike that of John Hughes's seminal teen film The Breakfast Club. Central to both stories is the idea that no matter your circumstance or social status, we’re all, essentially, the same. Pretty people feel sadness. Rebellious misfits worry. Even loners feel lonely sometimes.


the variation is that The Breakfast Club was released in 1985, and right now it’s 2019. You’d think that we would have learned by right now that our hearts are all pumping the same blood, yet this is one of these grass-is-greener lessons that is doomed to repeat itself in each generation up until the end of humanity. And thus right now we have that message updated for today’s teens in Trinkets.


Based on the book by Legally Blonde and 10 Things I Hate About You writer Kirsten Smith, Trinkets tells the story of three high schoolers who become unlikely companions immediately after they find themselves attending the same Shoplifters Anonymous meetings. There’s the pretty, popular, wealthy one, Tabitha (Swindell), the comfortably middle-class, quiet, friendless new girl, Elodie (Hildebrand), and the upset outsider who’s learned to survive with much less, Moe (Madeira).


certainly, those character descriptions are rather reductive. Identities are never that simple. We all have different versions of ourselves that we show to different people or in different places; how we aspire to be seen, how we actually are seen, and who we really are indoor. That’s why managing our identities can feel like a constant juggling act.


"I think at the starting of being in the industry, I really let it get to me. How brilliant I should seem and dress and act,” Hildebrand says, thinking back to her breakout role as Negasonic Teenage Warhead in Deadpool and Deadpool 2. “For a while, it sort of confused me. I was like, ‘Who am I going to be once I’m doing the interviews?’ And then does that mean I can’t be who I am just living my life? If I meet someone who is aware someone who is aware who I am? I put so much thought into it. Like, it’s foolish how much thought I put into it."


In time, she let some vulnerabilities slip into her public persona, more, and then some more. And eventually, those conflicting layers of her identity compressed into one.


“It’s OK to just have one version of yourself,” Madeira adds. “It’s OK to have numerous versions of yourself also, yet you don’t have to. I can be the same Kiana that I am at house, on set, in interviews, everywhere that I go. And I think that it’s such a relief as soon as you accept that and acknowledge that about yourself.”


That’s the realization we visualize Tabitha, Elodie, and Moe come to over the course of Trinkets’s 10-episode season. Before they had each other, they moved through life hiding beyond their curated façades, posting happy photographs on Instagram right after getting into a fight with an abusive boyfriend and blowing off classes while discreetly qualifying for an elite STEM program. However sharing secrets can be powerful, and being forced to share one — their shoplifting habits — rapidly leads to more. Soon, their guards fall down and their forced identities melt away, and the trio are leaning on each other while in times of joy, of heartbreak, and, most crucially, of mischief. And as Tabitha, Elodie, and Moe grow closer to each other, they find themselves falling away from the cliques they’d previously connected with. In back of the superficial labels, it turns out, they just didn’t have much in regular with those people.


It’s one of these facts of life that can hard to be able to see as soon as you’re in high school, nevertheless seem so obvious as soon as you leave. Life is bigger than high school. Eventually, just like the three characters, you’ll move on from the people you’ve been placed with by chance and it’ll be easier to flatten all your identities into the singular form that feels the most like you.


“It wasn’t up until I left my hometown, Whenever I was going to college in New York, where I felt like, ‘Wow, I can be whichever I'd like to be. And I can be totally surrounded and immersed within communities that I have habitually sought out to be within,’” Swindell says. “And I think those moments happen any time once you truly let yourself that sense of exploration.”


All three actors agree on that point, reflecting back on the identities they once presented to the world. “In high school, I had hair down to my hips,” Hildebrand, who right now rocks a tight pixie, says through a smile.


“She did,” Madeira and Swindell reply, in almost brilliant unison.


“I was super hippie. And then I cut it to donate, like a foot of it to my shoulders, and then I just got addicted to cutting my hair,” Hildebrand continues. “And soon after I moved to L.A. I was like, ‘I just need to shave my head, because that’s the only thing I haven’t done.’ And if I can be comfortable with a shaved head then I can be comfortable at any point in time, you know, with myself. And thus I did and it also was super liberating and I’ve had short hair ever since."


Then, the actor adds thoughtfully, "I don’t think I could go back to having long hair. Not because I don’t desire to — I think decorating hair is really fun. Although I just think it doesn’t suit me as a person anymore.”


“I feel like I’m still finding that,” Madeira jumps in. “I’m constantly trial and error with different things to be able to see how it makes me feel also. And then sometimes I feel good about things, and then sometimes I don’t. And also you know, it’s just a journey.”


At this point, Swindell looks contemplative. “For most of my life I didn’t really identify with how I looked or my body,” they mention. They’re still thinking back to their move to New York. “I began identifying and looking at myself as non-binary, and through that, and via recognition of that feeling and just the happiness that that gave me from that identification,” they recall, “I felt liberated.”


Swindell describes adapting their look by trying out different tailoring and silhouettes to “accentuate the things about myself that I felt most comfortable with,” and giving themself space to display femme and still visualize themself as non-binary. “It’s an impressive struggle for non-binary people,” they mention. “Presentation as well as how you feel about yourself and why your body looks in the resemble is an impressive feeling.”


In the end, it all comes back to identity being a journey. “As years go on, you find new ways to express yourself, whether it be from hair, clothes, or maybe makeup. Everything can sort of contribute to who you are,” Swindell says. “Once you step away from the societal norms of different things, you really are embracing who you authentically are and that’s like… so beautiful.”


Trinkets is currently streaming on Netflix.