KRISTINE FROSETH
On Froseth: Dress,
Zimmermann, $2,950.
Earrings, $1,298, rings,
$998 each, all, Adina
Reyter. Flats, Brother
Vellies, $425. For details,
see Shopping Guide.Kristine Froseth’s favorite scene in Hulu’s Looking for Alaska comes early, just
halfway through episode one. Her character, the titular Alaska, is perched above
an Alabama stream, book in hand. “The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García
Márquez. You ever read him?” she asks her seatmate, Miles (Charlie Plummer), a
welcome reincarnation of One Tree Hill’s Lucas Scott. The couple’s will-they-won’t-
they courtship guides the eight-part miniseries, based on John Green’s best-selling
YA novel. Secluded at a folksy ’90s boarding school, Alaska is intentionally teed up
as a stereotype for the Norwegian American actress to dismantle: the bibliophilic
cool girl, beer-chugging and mysterious, more illusion than ingenue. “Kristine saw
Alaska from the inside from the beginning,” Green says. ”She’s able to capture her
pain, vulnerability, and how she’s very performative when she’s around other people.”
Says Froseth: “Internally we’re very similar. Growing up and moving a lot, I put on this
mask, trying to fit in with different crowds, [which] she does as a way of protecting
herself.” The 23-year-old—whose upbringing was split between New Jersey and
Oslo, where she started modeling as a teen—first read the book in high school. “I
remember feeling like I was less alone,” adds the actress, who costarred in Netflix’s
2018 rom-com Sierra Burgess Is a Loser. “All your firsts are happening, or at least
mine were. That’s what John Green does so well: He puts all that onto paper.”