Johnson may have had nerves about leading a TV series for the first time, but her "Kindred" costars say they could barely tell she was an acting newbie. "You wouldn't know that it's her first leading role, I'll tell you that. That's what's crazy," Gayle Rankin, who plays Margaret Weylin, tells POPSUGAR. "[But] it's not crazy because she's [luminous]. She's a real raw talent, and not only a raw talent, she's an extremely curated talent. She's worked so hard. She was just fresh out of drama school, and she's a real artist. That was just so clear to me. She's extremely good and extremely humble, and it was so fun and challenging in the best way to work with her."
Others like Micah Stock, who plays Johnson's onscreen love interest, call the 24-year-old a "powerhouse" who's an "incredibly lovely person" and an "insanely talented wizard." "As a scene partner, there's just nothing better that you can ask for," he adds.
Meanwhile, Jacobs-Jenkins says Johnson is "a star." "It is a great luck to be able to be at the beginning of what's going to be someone's most . . . she's going to have an amazing career," he tells us. "She's unbelievably talented. She's beautiful, she works incredibly hard, and people don't understand how difficult a job it is to be the star of a show, especially in a show like this, where you're in almost every single scene. But she powered through this [like] an absolute pro with 10 times her experience. So I feel the show is that much richer to have Mallori attached to it."