Maia Reficco on Kit Connor, Pretty Little Liars Season 2, and Achieving Her Dreams

Maia Reficco loves to start a sentence with an exclamation. On acting in Do Revenge: “Oh my god! It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had shooting.” On if she’s seen Heartstopper, starring her Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow costar Kit Connor: “Oh my god! I love Heartstopper.” On the moment she heard Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin was renewed for season 2: “Oh my g—,” she cuts herself off in excitement. “I remember I just started bawling.”

She speaks with a breathless enthusiasm, whether she’s hanging out on the Original Sin set in upstate New York, pulling a late night in the U.K., or crashing at her co-star Malia Pyles’s apartment before they take on Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Hollywood. She’s 22 years old, and life is jumping from one fun experience to another, taking it all in, and realizing that you’ve achieved an early dream or two that you wished for as a kid. “When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being Hannah Montana,” Reficco says. 

Reficco was born in Boston but grew up in Buenos Aires after her family moved back to Argentina when she was six years old. There was a cultural split — she didn’t speak Spanish then, a fact she seems surprised to recall now. “I could not identify more with my Argentinian side now,” she says. “I speak Spanish in my day-to-day life. I still live there. It’s honestly what’s kept me grounded all of my life. Speaking in Spanish and being home feels so nurturing to me.” She’s close with her family, including younger brother Joaquin, who she describes as a “brilliant, talented singer.” 

It must run in the family: Reficco grew up singing, acting, and doing gymnastics, and loving all three. She felt destined to perform, to create. Her first acting role, however, didn’t go as planned. She nabbed a role in a Nintendo commercial for a Mario Kart game at 11 years old. 

“I was so nervous that I actually lost my voice the night before. I remember crying on my way to set,” she says. “I’m so nervous because it meant so much to me to finally be on a set. It’d taken so much convincing to make my mom let me that when we finally got to that point and the fact that my voice was gone and everything was so incredibly heartbreaking.” Luckily, the magic of automated dialogue replacement (ADR) saved the day.