Bella Thorne has been keeping busy amid quarantine — and has a few things up her sleeve. The 22-year-old actress continues to pave her own path and is thankful to have her “perfect” boyfriend, Benjamin Mascolo, by her side. Thorne and her Italian musician beau have been dating since April 2019.

“I got so lucky with my Ben. He’s really just the perfect specimen and I honestly don’t know how I got so blessed with him,” Thorne tells ET’s Katie Krause while promoting her Netflix film, The Babysitter: Killer Queen. “I love constantly learning about his life and his culture and his everything. [It’s] just so interesting when you date someone that hasn’t grown up with the same moralistic values and the same things as you.”

“There’s so much conversation to be had. So we really got to really know each other,” she says about their time in quarantine, adding that the “five months away from each other was hard…I got very lucky.”

Thorne has also been lucky in her career, and hopes to continue creating her empire. In the next decade, the actress wants to write another book, be able to spend more time with her loved ones and even get married.

“There’s going to be another book. I’m working on it right now…But [in the next] 10 years, marriage, happiness, taking a break from thinking so hard, hopefully while running my empire,” she expresses. “Hopefully in 10 years I can kind of take a good breather, feel accomplished and feel good about myself.”

She’s also writing a show, has the first two episodes written “and season arcs built out and what not.” While she doesn’t go into specifics about the show or share its title — “The title itself really gives the whole thing away” — Thorne does tease that “it’s definitely based in the industry.”

“It’s very dark. There’s a lot of young characters and parents, and we deal with the relationship between those,” she shares. “And all these characters really connect and intertwine throughout the whole series. Each episode, you kind of get a whole piece of that and it shocks you and then that kinda leads you into the next.”

While fans have to wait to hear more about her series, she doesn’t hold back about The Babysitter sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen. Thorne reprises her role as cheerleader Allison.

“It was so crazy having everybody back in this experience again, reliving these characters again,” she excitingly says, adding that it’s great “to be able to do a number two on a project that was so out there in the first place. To get to work with McG again and just be around his lively, sweet, endearing energy.”

Sharing that they “upped the ante” in the sequel, she adds that they had “a lot of fun going between a lot of the big jokes from the first movie. Kind of bringing those callbacks and just changing them a little bit with new characters. All of our new characters that are in it are just so fun. So out there. It’s very funny. It’s very good.”

“I think the way they did it was smart,” she continues, before touching on the possibility of a third film. “They could make a number three. They really could. I wouldn’t put it past anybody on that set to think of some crazy new thing and how it works. I’m just like, will they bring us all back again? That would just be, you know, like, ‘Oh my goodness!’”

For Thorne, it’s been important for her to fight for fully-developed female characters because, as she says, “almost every female in that industry has taken that on.” “To fight for a better world for our daughters, to kind of fight all these stigmas and all these boxes people put us into,” she notes. “You just have to. I feel like no matter what, I’ll always be fighting for it.”

The actress has come a long way from her Disney Channel Shake It Up days — as has her former co-star, Zendaya. The two have blazed their own trails and she hates when they are compared or pitted against each other.

“When you’ve got women and you’re growing up in the same market, even just as well other Disney stars, even if they’re not on the same show, you still get pitted against each other,” she relays. “And people are more likely to be like, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I think people love putting women against each other. It’s always this and that. It’s been happening to me and Zendaya since we started the damn show. It’s not a surprise.”

As far as Thorne is concerned, she doesn’t let the negativity get to her, adding that she doesn’t read articles about herself.

“I’m just not gonna waste my time hearing their negativity because I have better things to fill my head with. With growth, real growth,” she added. “And I think that when people are just really negative, then it’s harder to grow.”

Thorne, meanwhile, couldn’t be happier to support her friend, especially after Zendaya got nominated for an Emmy for her role on Euphoria.

“My goodness. I just hope she f**king wins,” Thorne exclaims. “The show is amazing. I love Sam Levinson. I love her, so I’m gonna have my fingers crossed the whole entire time. I’m going to be waiting for this acceptance speech!”

Source: etonline.com