JoJo, who co-stars with Valerie Bertinelli in next month’s Lifetime flick, “True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet,” got a kick out of playing a Hollywood train wreck because it’s sooo not her.

“It is so different from who I am,” she said yesterday at the Television Critics Association confab in La-La yesterday. “I am so focused and I have all these different people around me, you know, keeping me kind of walled in, so to let loose and play drunk and trip out of my limousine. It was fun.”

But JoJo, who turns 18 in December, lept to the defense of the out-of-control, rehab-hopping Hollywood starlets who, she claims, fall prey to the glitz and glamour of showbiz.

“There’s drugs all around us and the dating pool is very incestuous,” she said. “Everybody is kissing and making out and doing stuff with each other. It can get very destructive. And going out clubbing? You are so stressed. You work hard, so a lot of people play hard.”

As for the underwear: “That’s something I can’t do without.”

Levesque, whose last movie was the Robin Williams comedy “RV,” said she’s a big fan of Cali, but “it’s important to separate what is real and what is fake.”

Which means, for her, coming home to the Hub and studying up on the entry requirements for Boston University, Boston College and Northeastern so she can can spend her college years close to the people who keep her grounded.

“I would never go out and buy a $3,000 purse,” she laughed. “My mom would probably make me return it!”