This certainly isn’t your mother’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Andrew Scott stars as the titular sociopath in Ripley, Netflix’s dark dramatization of Patricia Highsmith’s novel from the 1950s, which takes a decidedly different approach to the source material than Anthony Minghella’s classic 1999 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Matt Damon. Written and created by Oscar winner Steven Zaillian, Ripley hews closer to Highsmith’s novel, following striver Tom as he befriends, murders, then impersonates Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), then makes his way through Italy avoiding capture.

For Dakota Fanning, stepping into the suave loafers of Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge Sherwood—a part memorably played by Paltrow—was a thrill from the moment she received the first scripts. “I’m a very fast reader as it is, but this was next level,” she said while appearing on VF’s Still Watching podcast. “I was like, I think you need to wait an hour or two before you respond.”

Although Tom Ripley is painted to be the ultimate outsider, Fanning was drawn to the surprising similarities between Marge and Tom. “I think that, weirdly, they kind of see a weird little piece of themselves in each other, and perhaps that’s why they dislike each other so much right from the start,” says Fanning. “Marge’s vanity sometimes gets in her way a little bit. Tom kind of uses that to ingratiate himself with her, and she kind of falls prey to that.”

Fanning dropped by Still Watching to chat about the first half of the series, this darker take on Tom Ripley, Marge’s opportunism, and how she stayed grounded while transitioning from child star to adult actor.

Vanity Fair: What was your relationship with The Talented Mr. Ripley before jumping onto this project?

Dakota Fanning: I was familiar with the characters, familiar with the material, and wasn’t jumping in totally blind. It was very clear from the beginning that Steve’s version was going to be a very faithful adaptation to the Patricia Highsmith novel. We were also going to get to go more in depth with the characters simply because of the eight-episode-series format. I know that was the big draw for [Steve]—being able to have that time to spend with Tom Ripley, especially, but with everyone.

So, I was excited when I read the scripts. I read them so quickly that I remember thinking, If I email Steve back now, he’s never going to believe that I read them all [laughs].

Ripley is completely different from the Anthony Minghella movie. It’s black and white. It’s macabre. It’s highly stylized. Did that influence your take on Marge at all? How did the aesthetics of this version influence your acting choices?

I think it influenced it a lot. I was a huge fan of the film, but we were doing something different. So there was no pressure for any of us to compare ourselves to anyone else or any other performance or anything—thank goodness. It was its own thing. And I was really happy with that. This Marge is totally suspicious of Tom from the very beginning. I had a lot of fun being able to kind of modulate that suspicion and figure out where it waxes and wanes.

And I loved getting to play with Marge’s own opportunism a little bit, which I don’t know has ever been seen before. Maybe she sees a little bit of herself in Tom, or Tom sees a little bit of himself in her. We learned that Marge is from Minnesota, so she’s kind of a small-town girl that maybe doesn’t come from the wealth that Dickie comes from. She’s figuring out her place in all of it too, in a less murderous way than Tom.

You’ve been working since you were a child, and have been in so many projects. How do you keep things fresh after all these years?

Well, I don’t know [laughs]. You just do. Sometimes you go through different periods of feeling about it. I’ve been working since I was six years old, and I just turned 30, so you go through different emotions. You have times where you’re more excited about things, and then you go through a period of kind of feeling, like, Oh, I need to change it up, or, Oh, I’ve been working too much. But I think as long as the root is that you love what you’re doing, as cliche and kind of boring as that sounds, I think it’s true.

I don’t know how to describe it any other way. Even during the moments of feeling down or moments of rejection, periods of negative emotions, if the root is still that you love what you’re doing and you can’t imagine doing anything else, then you’re kind of in the right place. I think I’ve learned that you can’t hold onto anything too tightly—you have to be fluid. If this is going to be your life and your career, then you have to kind of ride the wave of it and really value the experience.

This interview was edited and condensed.