MIRANDA COSGROVE CALLING THE SHOTS AFTER CHILD STARDOM

THE FORMER iCARLY STAR OPENS UP ABOUT NAVIGATING TEEN FAME, GETTING HER COLLEGE DEGREE AND LEADING HER FIRST ROM-COM

- JACK SMART

Like any reality TV fanatic, Miranda Cosgrove has a hard time picking a favorite show. There’s Love Island and Love on the Spectrum. As a teenager—back when she was famous as the star of Nickelodeon’s iCarly—“I really liked Teen Mom,” confesses the now 32-year-old, “but The Bachelor was the first one I really fell in love with.” But of late, she’s switched her allegiance to the Bachelorette franchise. Why? “I like when the girls are in charge,” she says with a grin.

In Cosgrove’s new Bachelor-inspired movie The Wrong Paris (on Netflix Sept. 12), the girls are definitely in charge. Her first romantic comedy as a lead actress tells the tale of a small-town Texan who enters a dating competition show for a promised flight to Paris—only to learn it’s being filmed in Paris, Texas. Executive-producing the Netflix film meant Cosgrove had a say in casting her hunky romantic lead, Pierson Fodé (for advice, “I asked a bunch of my girlfriends”) and set the tone during filming. “Because I started acting when I was so little, I never went to camp,” says the Los Angeles native, who quickly bonded with her female costars.