Emma Roberts is all smiles as she and little sister Grace do a little retail therapy at Fred Segal on Saturday afternoon (January 29).

But the 19-year-old actress insists her Homework character Sally isn’t the typical popular-mean girl that you see in other movies. She shared with MTV, “What I loved about her is on paper, she could very much be the cliche of the popular girl. But the way she’s written, and the way I tried to play her, was that there’s more to her than that.”

Emma added, “I hate in teen movies when someone’s categorized as ‘You’re this, not that.’ [Sally] kind of had that edge to her, but she was also really genuine.”

And what about her scenes with Freddie Highmore? “I felt bad [when Sally was kind of mean towards him]. Freddie and I had really good off-camera banter—we had good chemistry, as they say,” she said.