Singer, actress and dancer Sabrina Carpenter spoke with Rolling Stone‘s The First Time about her new film Work It, which arrives August 7th on streaming platforms.

In the movie, Carpenter portrays Quinn Ackerman, a girl whose passion for dance is well beyond her actual talent or skills. When she learns that admission to her dream college rests on her performance at a dance competition, Quinn enlists a ragtag squad to teach her the proper moves and help her achieve her dream.

“I read [the script], and I just instantly fell in love with the idea of playing someone that had no rhythm, can’t dance, and finds herself through dance, and through music,” Carpenter said. “She definitely has a really beautiful character arc throughout the film, and that was something that I was looking for.”

For Carpenter, who also produced Work It, the main challenge in playing the role of Quinn was not only getting her strength back up for the choreography — she says she hadn’t stretched properly for dance in seven years — but also learning how to dance badly for the first half of the film.

“[I was] in my body for the end of the movie and… completely out of my body for the first half of it,” she said. “So that was fun.”