Do you remember how adorable Michelle Trachtenberg was when she made her first appearance on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Even years later, when she was doing more serious work on Gossip Girl, she still had that charming adorability. It was like she was incapable of ever truly growing up and becoming an adult. It didn’t help that she seemed to always be playing characters 10 years younger than she is, so perhaps all she needs is to play someone closer to her age. It seemed like an odd choice to cast her in the Nat Geo film Killing Kennedy. Again, that image I’ve had of her, as an eternal teenager, made it hard for me to see her in a film about President Kennedy’s assassination. It turns out I’m just a big fool.

At the first glimpse of Trachtenberg as Marina Oswald, I didn’t realize who I was looking at.