Actress Abigail Breslin is shown during an interview with The Canadian Press in Toronto on Tuesday June 2, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

TORONTO - It wasn't how Abigail Breslin expected her first close encounter with Nick Jonas to go down.

"Yelling at him with coffee breath," the 19-year-old actress recalled of one of their scenes together on Breslin's new series, "Scream Queens," premiering Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on City.

"That wasn't what I envisioned that scenario being when I was, like, 13. But you know what? Hey — it's still Nick Jonas."

Breslin, who got an Oscar nomination for playing a spirited beauty pageant contestant in "Little Miss Sunshine," stars in the series as a member of a popular sorority plagued by a string of murders.

Emma Roberts plays the catty sorority president, Lea Michele of "Glee" co-stars as one of the pledges and Jamie Lee Curtis plays the university dean who forces the sorority to accept anyone who wants to join.

Ian Brennan, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk created the Fox series, which was filmed in New Orleans and has been described as a combination of "Heathers," "American Horror Story" and "Mean Girls."

Breslin said she was "so obsessed" with the Jonas Brothers before Nick signed on to the show to play a fraternity member.

The night before he arrived on set, she fretted to her friends that she would feel embarrassed and awkward around him — even though she'd previously met him at three of his concerts.

"I was like, 'Nick Jonas is working tomorrow.... What should I be like? Should I pretend I don't remember him? Like, do that whole move and be like, "Oh, hey! Oh, we have met? Yeah, wow, God, so long ago,'" said the New York native.

"'Or should I just be like, 'Hey, Nick,' or like, 'HEY, Nick,' but not too excited, though ... just casual about it?'"

She ended up playing it cool: "I was like, 'Heyyy, hi, how's it going? How are you? What's up? God, excited for the scene? Yeah, me too.'"

Breslin also became equally "obsessed" with pop superstar Ariana Grande, who joined the cast as a sorority member.

"She's the cutest, sweetest, happy, little, cute," said Breslin, running out of adjectives. "Like, she's not real."

Then there's Curtis, who is "so cool," said Breslin.

"She followed me on Twitter and I was like," she said, letting out a big sigh. "Then I DM'd her and I was just like, 'I just want to say, I'm so excited to work with you.'

"When she got to New Orleans, she was like, 'Hey, you want to get dinner tonight?' and I was like, 'Really, like, can I?'"

The ever-expressive Breslin also gets candid in her new book, "This May Sound Crazy," due out Oct. 6.

The collection of non-fiction essays about love in the social media era stems from a blog she started around age 16.

"It's basically like non-fiction essays that I've written just about why not to stalk your ex on Facebook and stuff like that — you know, the really important things in the world," she said with a laugh.

"It gets real. It gets way too real.... I talk about a lot of things, like apparently saying to a guy that you're 'harvesting a zit' is not cute."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2015