Go on Set with Bella Thorne...in Africa!

It's just another Monday at the office, except that I have a Skype date with a special someone shooting a movie about 8,000 miles from Manhattan. "Video call from Bella Thorne!" my computer alerts me.

"Look at my hair!" she says, pulling her recently chopped scarlet locks toward the camera. "I've never had short hair." Bella cut it for her new role in Blended, a comedy due out next spring, in which she stars as Adam Sandler's daughter. What's cooler than being cast opposite Adam Sandler? Filming the movie on location an hour outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

"The culture, it's just beautiful," Bella, fifteen, says. Her 5:45 a.m. call times "can be exhausting" (along with going to school on set), but, Bella insists, "This is one of the best opportunities I'll ever have." She reveals in our chat that her character is a basketball player with her sights set on the varsity squad: "I worked my butt off." Bella grabs a basketball and waves it in front of the camera. "I've got it right here next to me. It haunts me!" she laughs. "There's a sports scene in almost every movie Adam does, and in this movie, it's basketball with me!" Along with her on-the-court skills, Bella says she's learning from her on-screen dad: "Anytime a fan stops him, he'll take a picture with them." Also in the movie is Drew Barrymore, who just sent her flowers. "She has this beautiful energy when she walks into the room and gives everyone a hug," Bella says.

On a recent day off, Bella visited the Cape of Good Hope with her boyfriend, Tristan Klier, and went on safari at Ukutula, a nearby game farm, with her mom. "Going on safari was my mom's dream," she says. "The elephants came right in front of our car, and we couldn't speak, because they could charge us!"

The star admits she's always had the travel bug. "Next, I really want to visit Italy," she says. "I'm Italian, and I've always wanted to go there." Bellissima!