Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Sometimes being the tag-along kid sister works out.

For Sophie Guest, a 15-year-old sophomore in the Avonworth school district, tagging along landed her a small part in the 2012 filmed-in-Pittsburgh movie “Jack Reacher.” Now she has a recurring role in the Amazon Prime Video series “Them.”

Guest was 6 when her older sister, Meagan, was modeling and Meagan’s agent, Pittsburgh’s Deb Docherty, asked Sophie to audition for a role – “little girl” — in Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher.”

Sophie Guest is in the opening scene, filmed in Downtown Pittsburgh, playing a girl asking her nanny for a snowcone before the nanny gets shot and the girl runs away.

Guest did meet Cruise but didn’t know who he was.

“On my last day I ran into him going back to my trailer,” Guest recalled. “He was, like, ‘There are doughnuts over there if you want some,’ and I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ People ask me, ‘What did you think of him?’ and I’d say, ‘He was so tall,’ and obviously he’s known for being short but because I was so young it didn’t click for me.”

After “Jack Reacher” Guest attended acting camps locally and in Los Angeles, landing a Hollywood agent and a manager following a showcase performance at the end of the L.A. acting camp. More roles followed in projects shot locally — 2014’s “Those Who Kill” and “The Fault in Our Stars” (her scene was cut but is in the film’s extended edition), 2015’s “Love the Coopers” and the upcoming “Dear Zoe” — and elsewhere, 2017’s Lifetime movies “Fatal Defense” and “The Good Nanny.”

Now she’s in “Them,” a horror-thriller with evocative images – pastel-painted houses in a perfectly-manicured suburban Los Angeles neighborhood juxtaposed with a Hitchcockian vibe – courtesy of director Nelson Cragg (“Ratched”).

Created by Little Marvin and executive produced by Lena Waithe (“The Chi”), Amazon’s “Them,” now streaming, is an anthology series that tells a new horror story each season. Season one follows the Emorys, a Black family who move from North Carolina to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood in the 1950s where they are terrorized by both supernatural forces and racist cops and neighbors (Alison Pill, Liam McIntyre).

Guest plays Doris who, despite Doris’ offensive and oblivious backhanded compliments, befriends Ruby Emory (Shahadi Wright Joseph, “Us”) on Ruby’s first day at her new high school.

“When I received the character description, it was spot-on physically what I look like, ‘the quintessential California girl,’” Guest said. “I knew immediately I should fly out and audition in person rather than film [my audition] remotely, which is what we normally do.”

Guest appears in five of the 10 episodes of “Them,” filmed in L.A. in late 2019, beginning in episode two.

She lives with her parents, Amy and Steve Guest, in the North Hills, and although she’s had a dozen screen roles, she hasn’t yet appeared in school plays, though she says she might like to try a stage musical at some point.

“I really hope to one day go to one of the many fine colleges that California has to offer,” Guest said, “maybe study screenwriting or directing, so I can get more involved in the industry besides being an actress.”

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