Victoria Justice Talks Tinder & Taking on Challenging 'Eye Candy' Role (JJJ Interview)

Victoria Justice opens up to JJJ in this brand new interview about her new MTV thriller Eye Candy!

The 21-year-old actress plays Lindy, a hacker with a gift for seeing clues and connections in the digital world that others can’t.

Persuaded by her roommate (Kiersey Clemons) to try online dating, Lindy begins to suspect that one of her suitors is a deadly cyber stalker. When the local cyber-crimes unit uncovers a potential serial killer in Manhattan, all signs point to this mysterious stalker.

Teaming up with the cyber unit and some hacker friends, Lindy leads the charge to solve these murders while unleashing her own style of justice on the streets of New York City.

Eye Candy premieres TONIGHT @ 10PM on MTV! Check out our interview with Victoria below!

JustJaredJr.com: Hi Victoria! We’re excited about the show! Tell us about how you became involved with it. We’re you looking for a new TV role?

Victoria Justice: I was looking for a new TV role, definitely. I had been sent a few different scripts from different networks and I knew I wanted to do something different than Victorious. I ha been doing sitcoms and comedies since I was 12 to 19. I was like, “OK, I’m 21 now. I want to challenge myself as an actress. I want to do a one-hour drama. I read the Eye Candy script and I loved the people who were involved with it. I felt like I was in good hands as far as I knew the scary suspenseful stuff would be done well. And then when I read the script, it was such a page turner for me. I was so invested in my character and there were so many twists and turns. I loved that it was dark and creepy. It was everything I wanted my next project to be. And it’s also has this sexiness to it and I’m very excited to be playing a woman my own age now. So hopefully people like it!

Click inside to read the rest of our interview with Victoria Justice…

JustJaredJr.com Interview – Victoria Justice

JJJ: Do you like those dark, creepy dramas?

VJ: Yeah, I do love a good crime drama. I think they just hook you in and you get invested in those kinds of stories. I do love scary, suspenseful movies, but they do have an effect on me. I’ll go to the theater and then come home at night, and ask my sister to sleep with me. Or as soon as I shut off my lights, I’ll do that thing where I’ll run to my bed and jump on top of it, so nothing can grab my legs (laughs). Totally paranoid weird stuff like that.

JJJ: We know Lindy is a hacker, but how would you describe her personality?

VJ: I would describe Lindy as a very determined, intelligent, and independent woman, who also has a really big heart. She has a mission and she uses her brilliant hacking skills for good. She had something very tragic happen to her and she wants to help find missing people. She’s very compassionate as well.

JJJ: Being a hacker, she is super intelligent and talks about all these things we’ve never heard of. Was it difficult memorizing all that stuff?

VJ: Some of it was pretty difficult, some of the hacker jargon I had to learn. I think it’s the first episode where my webcam has been hacked and I’m talking about using all these words about how I’m going to get it back, the IP address and all of that. I didn’t really know half of the things, but I looked it up afterward. At the end of the day, I just learn the lines and say it over and over and over again. It’s harder when you’re learning information like that. It’s not necessarily part of the story, but just information you have to store in your brain. So after I do the scene, I kind of just forget it (laughs).

JJJ: Tell us about Lindy’s close friends in her circle of trust.

VJ: Her best friend is Sophia, played by Kiersey Clemons, who is so talented and so much fun to work with. And they’re roommates. She’s super protective over Sophia and they have a really great friendship where they’re always looking out for each other. Sophia gets a little concerned about Lindy sometimes because Lindy will dive head first and she has this mission to date these guys she met on this online dating site, to find a serial killer. So Sophia is the one who tries to reign her in sometimes to make sure she doesn’t get herself in too much trouble or put herself in too much danger. So that’s her best friend and she owns this nightclub that’s really cool called IRL. I feel like Sophia is the perfect counterpart to Lindy because she’s very free-spirited and bubbly, and loves the nightlife. And Lindy has a more serious, dark side because she’s had a lot of travesty happen to her.

And also, of course, her other confidante is George, who is played by the wonderful, amazing Harvey Guillen, who is also so talented and hilarious. I just love him so much. We work in the IT department together for this big corporate company. He is totally in on the missions of trying to find missing people, and he helps me out all the time. I can call him in the middle of the night and he’ll be over to try to help me solve or hack into something. Those are the two closest people to Lindy.

JJJ: Did you and your castmates get to hang out and bond while filming?

VJ: We totally bonded. I honestly feel so lucky. When you do a TV show, you have no idea who your castmates are going to be. And let’s say the show goes on for a while, these people are going to become your family. So obviously you want to get stuck with some good ones! I feel so lucky because I’m good friends with everyone who works on the show. It’s such a great cast and crew. Everyone is super down-to-earth, but really talented and serious about the work. Just so much fun to be around. We wanted to hang out with each other in our down time. We’re all going to get together for the premiere [tonight].

JJJ: Of course, we see Lindy try to search for a serial killer by dating all these guys on “Flirtual,” which is your version of Tinder. Had you heard horror stories from friends?

VJ: Yeah, I’ve definitely heard horror stories (laughs). I have a friend who is on Tinder and stuff like that. I feel like Tinder is more of hookup thing. I don’t know many people who’ve met their soulmate on Tinder necessarily (laughs). But my same friend went on this dating website, I’m not sure which one it was, but she was talking to a guy, showing him pictures. And we we’re like, “Yeah, he is really cute.” He was a businessman who works in oil and all this stuff. She was like, “I think this could really work out.” But every time she would ask to Skype or talk on the phone, he would be like, “I don’t have a connection here” or “I don’t have a webcam.” He had all these excuses. He had this whole sob story about how his parents were killed or something. This whole tragic story. But then he basically ends up asking her to send him money. So it was this whole scam. So yeah, you have to be really careful with online dating. You never know who’s on the other side of that computer screen. And that goes for social media as well. Even fans that follow me, I want younger kids to be careful as well because you really never know who you’re talking to.

JJJ: Is this a show you think your fans can watch?

VJ: Yeah, definitely. I started on Nickelodeon when I was 12, so I feel like a lot of people who know me, have grown up with me over the years. A lot of them are in their late teens or 20s now. I think they can definitely watch the show. Taking myself out of it, I would still watch it. It’s really intriguing and the whole cyber aspect of it, the serial killer and mystery of it all. The look of the show is really beautiful as well. It’s filmed in New York, which was really exciting for me to be able to move somewhere different and have New York as a backdrop. There are so many shots where we’ll have the Brooklyn Bridge in the background and the lights of the city. New York is really a character in itself on the show.

JJJ: Did you encounter a lot of fans while filming?

VJ: When I was filming in Manhattan, sometimes there would be people gathering around who recognized me. So I would take pictures with them. And there was another time when we were filming in Brooklyn in this apartment building. I was on the roof top getting some air and there was a school across the street. These kids recognized me and they were yelling out of their classroom window like, “Victoria, we love you! We can’t wait for Eye Candy!” I was like, “Thanks guys! Love you too!” So it was really cute! Living in New York was really cool. It’s a totally different vibe from L.A. Just walking around the streets of Williamsburg, no one would really recognize me. I could kind of do my own thing and I loved the hipster, artsy feel. It was right up my alley. Totally my vibe.

JJJ: Lastly, describe the show in three words. Go!

VJ: I would say creepy, sexy, and suspenseful.