Young actor featured in film with Matthew McConaughey

RIO RANCHO — A young local actress is featured alongside Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey in the film "The Lost Bus."

For Sophie Jane Frick, who lives on the border of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, the experience was multifaceted in all the good ways.

“It’s just such an amazing experience to be able to be here and to do what I love,” she said.

"Lost Bus," a movie based on true events described in a book, follows a teacher and 22 students trying to get out of the nation’s most disastrous fires in Paradise, California, in 2018.

Frick plays one of those students and has integral parts in the movie. Though she can’t talk about her scenes before the movie releases, Frick spoke about her experience with McConaughey and the casting process.

“I never really thought about him much until the 'Lost Bus,' and so that’s when I decided I should find out who I might be working with, and he’s an amazing actor,” she said.

She added that while on set, McConaughey was “extremely nice” to her and they had some conversations between filming, which took four to five months for Frick’s part.

“It was just kind of casual conversations, especially at the end the last day I remember he came up to me and said, ‘One day, whenever you have kids, they’ll be watching you on the big screen and be, like, 'Hey, what are you doing up there?’” she said.

Her mom, Erin, said this is not the first time her daughter has acted in a production. Frick and her sister were also in the thriller series "Dark Winds."

“They just finished wrapping their fourth season of that. But this was a really great experience for her and for us as a family,” Erin said.

She said McConaughey brought his own family on set at times and was welcoming to everyone.

When Frick is not in filming, she is horseback riding, participating in the Rio Rancho Archery Club and attending online school.

But Frick also spends time researching her roles.

She prepared for the role in many ways, including reading the book, visiting with real victims from the fire and visiting some New Mexico locations that have dealt with similar disasters.

“I actually kind of wish that I had seen this stuff sooner because when I originally booked the role, I researched all of this about Paradise, California, and I had only seen photos of what was left, but when I was up in Ruidoso, since similar things happened to them, actually comparing from seeing it from photos and then actually being there in real life, it was just a totally different experience. It actually felt almost unreal,” she said.

She recalled looking at the wreckage in Ruidoso and seeing melted glass and “day-to-day stuff” burnt around her.

“I feel like it was very important for me to see that, especially since I am in a movie about that happening. It kind of changed my perspective,” she said.

Erin was also glad for that experience and the reading of the book because of the family’s history of first responders.

“My husband is a police officer, my mother is a nurse and I was in the military, so listening to the audiobook and understanding the magnitude of this disaster, it was really important, I think, to her, to really understand,” Erin said.

“They actually brought the real-life bus driver to set the teacher that was on the bus, so I got to meet them and then, even a student that was on the bus that day,” Frick said.

Aside from acting, her favorite part of the experience was meeting people from the original incident, other castmates and crew.

Frick hopes the movie brings awareness to disastrous events like the Paradise Fire.

“I would say that this is a very important story. I think everybody should know about it, because even though it doesn’t affect the people who are watching it as much as the people who actually experienced it, it can still show how everyday people can become heroes whenever you least expect it,” she said.