Rainbow Wedell Teases Her “Mysterious” School Spirits Character (Exclusive)

High school is actually an eternity for Peyton List and company. The Cobra Kai standout stars in Paramount+’s School Spirits, a paranormal murder mystery that sets out to find List’s Maddie Nears’s killer. Among the suspicious ensemble is Rainbow Wedell’s Claire Zolinski, a popular cheerleader that gives Maddie the evil eyes in their early interactions.

While Wedell has been acting for over a decade, School Spirits represents one of her first big projects. Speaking to ComicBook.com’s Liam Crowley, Wedell noted she wanted to be apart of the series as soon as she was caught up on the screenplay.

“I loved the script,” Wedell said. “I think I read for [Sarah Yarkin’s] Rhonda first, and then I did a callback and a chemistry read and everything for Rhonda, and then they presented me with the opportunity to play Claire and I fell in love. I was obsessed with Claire.”

That obsession comes largely in part due to the character depth within Claire. As Wedell teases, the aforementioned evil eyes in the first episode is a small piece of a much bigger puzzle.

“She’s definitely not what she seems to be in the first couple of episodes,” Wedell noted. “There’s a lot of layers to her. There’s a lot more to her than meets the eye. She’s really mysterious. I’m excited for everyone to see who Claire truly is.”

Like teen dramas Degrassi and 13 Reasons Why before it, School Spirits has a significant amount of exaggeration to its narrative. That said, the core of the story is rooted in reality.

“There’s a lot of realness. There’s a lot of real issues and territories that the creators dived into. It’s so deep,” Wedell said. “Every character is really three-dimensional. It looks at the aspects to do with family and chosen family and the issues that teenagers are dealing with in high school. I think it sheds a lot of light on that, and I know that a lot of the audience will learn a lot from this show.”

New episodes of School Spirits stream on Paramount+ every Thursday.