DALLAS (KDAF) — Fort Worth native Mallory James Mahoney stars in the Disney Channel original series Bunk’d.

Plot synopsis: Emma, Ravi, and Zuri Ross head off to a rustic summer camp in Maine, where their parents met as teens. Along with their new friends, love triangle, and the fears of the camp, the trio tries their best to settle into their exciting and challenging new lives at Camp Kikiwaka.

Mallory joined Inside DFW to talk more about the show and her background in DFW.

Congratulations on graduating from high school, by the way, so tell us how you did that in your whole school experience. We were just kind of chatting behind the scenes along with your mom and talking about how in elementary school you kind of started traveling back and forth to Los Angeles. How did you finish school doing all this?

When I was in sixth grade, I switched to online school, which is iUniversity Prep with Grapevine Colleyville right here. They are so helpful. It really kind of helped with my schedule, because everything’s so crazy. I can always get assignments done when they’re due. So I get a little extra time for my teachers. But I’ve always really loved school, and I love learning. So I worked really hard. I was actually able to graduate a semester early.

Let’s talk about how you got started in acting because you were a really shy little girl. So how did this all start?

When I was young, I was very shy, and when I was five years old, my parents took me to a play. I was just sitting there watching it, and something clicked in my mind like this is what I want to do. I told my parents I want to start acting. They were like, ‘No, you’re too shy. You’ll hate it. We don’t want to put you in that situation.’ And I asked them for like a year. They finally put me in a local theater at Kauffman just to try and scare me out of it. But I loved it. LI booked a solo in my first week. They were totally shocked, and everything has really grown from there.

What was the first role that you would say was like, ‘Okay, I’m really going to do this professionally.’

I don’t know, I feel like I booked my first short film gig, and that was the biggest thing I’d done at the time, it was so much fun. That’s really where I just totally fell in love with it.

Let’s talk about Bunk’d. For people who have not seen it talk about the premise of the show.

Bunk’d is a show about a summer camp with a bunch of campers, counselors, camp owners, lots of craziness and hiking. It’s just it’s a fun show.

You and I were talking about this, neither of us actually went camping back in the day yet or homebodies. What was it like to sort of play that camper then camp counselor role?

I really love getting to see the growth of my character Destiny. She’s changed a lot over the years. She started out as a very, very competitive pageant queen, and then we got to grow and see her learn to start caring about the environment and making really close friends and not just always competing with everyone. So I feel like it was a perfect move for her to be gaining more responsibility around the camp.

Are the two of you alike at all in real life?

A little bit alike. We definitely have like lots of the same type of style, and we both have a little bit of a dark side. She’s more intense with everything. I’ll definitely say that.