Grace VanderWaal is growing up: With new music and a “Megalopolis” role, the “America's Got Talent” winner is coming into her own – even if “it makes people really uncomfortable”

Eight years after Grace VanderWaal won “America's Got Talent,” people still see her as the shy 12-year-old girl from Kansas who captivated everyone with her ukulele playing and thoughtful songs.

“I recently had the strangest experience,” VanderWaal, now 20, tells Variety over Zoom from LA, the blunt bangs of her teenage years replaced with a sleek platinum bob. She tells how, one evening with friends, she met a woman coming out of the bathroom.

“She was like, 'You're a woman!' You're an adult!'” VanderWaal says, mimicking the drunken fan's shock. “I literally wanted to gently raise her, but she couldn't get over it. She couldn’t handle it.”

Lately, VanderWaal has been faced with such reactions a lot – fans who can't stop seeing her as a symbol of the purity and innocence of youth – even though she's been…