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Sofia Black-D’Elia Doesn’t Want to Play Herself (WWD)

The 30-year-old actress stars in “Single Drunk Female,” a comedic series created by Simone Finch and produced by Jenni Konner.

Freeform’s new series, “Single Drunk Female,” starts with its main character hitting rock bottom. Samantha is in her late 20s and living in New York, where she works at a clickbait news website named Bzzz — both a nod toward BuzzFeed and the character’s tendency to show up to work buzzed. After a drunken incident on the job, Sam is forced to move home and recalibrate her life.

The series — which counts “Girls” alum Jenni Konner as an executive producer — is an unlikely comedy about the journey toward sobriety. For lead actress Sofia Black-D’Elia, balancing the heaviness of the subject matter with a comedic tone proved the biggest challenge of making sure the premise landed.

“[That challenge] is also the thing that’s most rewarding,” says the Brooklyn-based actress, whose previous credits include “The Mick” and the original “Gossip Girl.” “The material that I’m most drawn to as an audience member, as an actor, are things that are reflective of the human experience — which I think is often very funny and very sad at the same time,” she adds.

Black-D’Elia credits series creator and writer Simone Finch (who formerly worked on “The Conners”) for the nuanced portrayal of the relationships and situations that surround AA. Sam navigates new dynamics with her sponsor, fellow group members, childhood friends, and mother, a role played by Ally Sheedy. “I was surprised at how well [Finch] was able to tell this story of recovery in a half hour comedy format,” says Black-D’Elia.

Finch based the series on her own experiences, and was an invaluable resource for Black-D’Elia and the rest of the cast throughout filming. “Simone was so generous, and continues to be so generous, with all of us about her life and her journey through recovery,” she says. “As an actor, I don’t really like to play myself — I want to play a character that’s unfamiliar to me and dive headfirst into a world that I don’t know as well as my own,” she continues. “I was really excited to investigate Simone’s experience and understand that better.”

The pilot filmed at the end of 2020, and the full series was filmed in Atlanta this past summer. While a second season hasn’t yet been announced, Black-D’Elia is hopeful.

“I have no control over what happens next and I’m not very good at predicting the future, but I hope that audiences connect to [the show],” she says. “And especially those that might relate to Sam for Anonymous reasons, I hope that they find hope and joy in the show. And hopefully we get to do it again — I think there’s a lot left in these relationships to explore.”

SOURCE WWD

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Sofia for W Magazine

Sofia Black-D’Elia Has No Problem Taking Her Time

Gen-Z may be dominating your screen every which way, but Millennials are still having their moment, too—albeit a less dazzling, more pared down, and, dare we say, realistic one. Anxieties about entering your thirties and figuring out what kind of mark you’re going to leave seem to be at an all time high—just look at Tick, Tick… Boom!, The Worst Person in the World, or even Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You if you need proof. The upward trend in addiction narratives is worth noting, too—Euphoria has been both lauded and criticized for its raw, and at times over-the-top depictions of a teen struggling through Narcotics Anonymous meetings between (sometimes attending) high school classes. It’s been compared to the after-school special Canadian drama Degrassi (which will be rebooted for the fifth time next year), and, more accurately, has drawn comparisons to the U.K. series Skins.

Ironically, Sofia Black-D’Elia also starred on the short-lived American remake of the latter, a beloved British drama—she was Tea, the bisexual bad-girl high school cheerleader. The actress returns to the small screen in January—but this time, she plays Sam, another bisexual “bad girl,” though much more realistic in her struggle with alcoholism and crisis about nearing 30, in Single Drunk Female.

Black-D’Elia, who also recently turned 30, can relate to some of Sam’s antics on display in Single Drunk Female. “You tell yourself in your early twenties that you know exactly who you are, and you project it really loudly into the world,” the actress says with a laugh when she meets me via Zoom, flanked by a calendar and a portrait of a cat hanging on the wall behind her in her Brooklyn home. “Then you start to realize you don’t know as much as you thought you did and you have to rebuild. It was nice to play somebody who’s at the same part of their life and journey as I am, even though the things we struggle with and our vices are very different.”

Created by Simone Finch and produced by Jenni Konner and Leslye Headland, the series also stars Rebecca Henderson, Madeline Wise, Garrick Bernard, and Ally Sheedy. Black-D’Elia says it was the team of women behind Single Drunk Female that drew her to the project. “It’s a very bizarre time to be making things,” she says of the series, which was filmed during the pandemic, between Chicago and Atlanta. When she first took a look at Finch’s script, she thought it was so specific—which meant to her that it had to be grounded in some truth, and couldn’t have just been some abstract idea of what sobriety might look like. “Tonally, it was a really interesting challenge,” she adds. “It’s a half-hour comedy, but it’s about something really serious and difficult that a lot of young people go through.”

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Go Inside the Press Day for Roundabout Underground’s Usual Girls

The world premiere from Ming Peiffer is set to begin performances October 11 Off-Broadway.

Roundabout Underground’s world premiere production of Usual Girls is set to begin performances Off-Broadway October 11 ahead of a November 5 opening night. The new play from Ming Peiffer, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is scheduled to play at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre through December 9.

Through the story of Kyeoung, Usual Girls takes a look at the ways in which girls grow up. From tackling a boy on her elementary school playground and beyond, the new drama is described by Roundabout as a “hilarious, explicit gut-punch of a play.”

Usual Girls will officially kick off the 12th season of Underground. The Roundabout Underground initiative is dedicated to introducing and cultivating emerging writers by giving them their first Off-Broadway production or a reading of a new work.

SOURCE PLAYBILL

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Paper Magazine – Scan

I have added 1 scan from the latest issue of Paper Magazine to the gallery, scanned by me exclusively for the site.

Press
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Actress Sofia Black-D’Elia on trying out comedy, mustaches, and the benefits of obscurity

Sofia Black-D’Elia says she first got into acting “by accident.” As a kid, she looked up to a group of older girls who were all enrolled in a commercial acting class, so she signed up, too. And it’s a good thing she did. Now 25, Black- D’Elia nabbed her first TV role on All My Children at 17 before getting cast as Tea, a semi-closeted gay teen on MTV’s American adaptation of the hit UK teen soap Skins. She followed that up with a scene-stealing part on Gossip Girl as Sage, a meddling teen who dates heartthrob Nate Archibald.

Most recently, the New Jersey native has taken on two similarly rebellious roles on two very different shows. In the first, HBO’s The Night Of, she played troubled femme fatale Andrea, whose murder in the pilot episode is the driving force behind the plot. And in the second, Fox’s The Mick, she plays Sabrina, a cigarette-smoking party girl who also serves on her high school’s honor board and occasionally has to co-parent her younger siblings with her messy boozehound aunt (the titular Mick — or Mickey — played by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olson) after her parents go on the lam to avoid criminal charges.

Viewers of The Mick might be genuinely surprised to learn it’s the first time Black-D’Elia is flexing her slapstick skills. She credits Olson’s “maternal” nature as being critical to Black-D’Elia feeling comfortable in comedy. “Kaitlin is a safety net,” she says. “I feel really lucky because I can’t imagine doing comedy for the first time without that, and it really has been one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had.”

Like Sabrina, Black-D’Elia is outspoken, especially on matters of justice, and she “compulsively” shares her thoughts about politics on social media. “It feels frivolous and insincere to post things on social media every day and not acknowledge what’s going on in the world,” she says. Her commanding screen presence paired with her social responsibility has us wondering not if, but when, she will break into the mainstream as Hollywood’s latest answer to the woke starlet. But for now, Black-D’Elia is plenty pleased with the “privilege” of “obscurity.” Enjoy it while it lasts, Sofia — something tells us you won’t be part of the fringe for long.

The Mick is your first comedy but you seem like a natural, particularly in this role.

That’s very kind of you to say. I wanted to do this show: A) because Kaitlin has been an idol of mine for a decade; B) because the script was the funniest thing I read all year; and C) because I thought if I’m going to do this for the first time, I’m probably gonna screw up a lot, and I really want to screw up around people that I feel safe with. Kaitlin just is a safety net. Every day she reassures the entire cast, “I’m never going to let you go home feeling like you didn’t do a great job at work. I will be here for you and I will help you through it.” So I feel really lucky because I can’t imagine doing comedy for the first time without that, and it really has been one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had.

Does Kaitlin ever give you any advice?

All the time. She’s given me advice on, like, how to be a woman in the workplace and how to assert yourself without the fear of being a bitch and how to take control over you own career, things that I really couldn’t learn from anybody. I feel very grateful for her. She is obviously one of our greatest comedic actresses but she’s also a really beautiful human being and I adore her.

I want to talk about your Funny Or Die video, which I loved. How did that come about?

The lovely folk over at Funny Or Die are fans of The Mick and The Night Of and said, “Would you want to come by or have a brainstorm about something you might want to do with us?” And I said I’d love that because I love those guys and I love the platform they give people. So we were talking about if I had any ideas that might be able to turn into sketches or that kind of thing, and I said I’ve been collecting on my laptop a list of copy and pasted character descriptions from scripts I’ve read over the years that I just couldn’t believe a guy actually wrote. They had been working on something very similar, so we combined the two ideas into this short film about these guys that think they’re really doing a service to women and really believe they’re writing them very well. It was my first time ever getting to wear a wig and mustache — and now I know why guys grow mustaches, because you could just play with it all the time. So that ended up being my favorite part of the day.

When you look for roles, are you specifically searching for multi-dimensional female characters?

Ideally, yes, but I’m not really in a position yet to handpick what I do. I still have to work when I’m fortunate enough to be given the chance to do so. I think in the future, if I I’m in a position where I can be really picky, I will definitely be more selective about what I do. I’ve been lucky recently in The Mick and The Night Of where those are two women that are fully formed people and they’re really interesting and different from anything I’ve played, so I’ve been really lucky. It’s something you’re always cognizant of and think you wish you didn’t have to be at all. But sadly you do.

You’ve said, “I like playing doomed girls.” You do almost seem to get typecast as the badass chick, which in terms of being pigeonholed, it could be much worse.

Again, I feel like I’m still so at the beginning of this whole thing. I’m lucky in that I can create a character that I think is right for a story and if it’s good enough they’ll go, “Okay you can play with us and do this.” I don’t think that I’m expected to bring that to the table yet. I do find that I’m naturally attracted to female characters like that, but mostly I think I just relate to them easier than the girl that’s got it all going on or something like that. So I think at this point it’s just, like, what do I relate to and what can I connect to and then build a character out of that.

What are your interests outside of acting?

I find that my interests are very boring. I cook Blue Apron with my boyfriend. We’re really into World War II docs. Right now, we’re reading Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. We’re in a very dark headspace and I think that my typical fun hobbies have been kind of pushed to the side momentarily.

You are pretty vocal about politics on social media. Do you feel you have a duty to use your voice?

I don’t know that I have that big of a platform, so I don’t necessarily feel like I have a duty to be speaking to any group of people. I don’t think anyone’s following me that I have an influence over, for me it’s more of a compulsion. I think it’s the number one thing I think about, the number one thing a lot of other people think about, so it feels frivolous and insincere to post things on social media every day and not acknowledge what’s going on in the world. I’ve never spoken out or been quote-unquote political for the sake of a duty or obligation or anything like that. It’s honestly just because I cannot help myself from being honest. And that’s not to say I don’t understand actresses and other celebrities that don’t use the platform for that, because I think it’s a choice. But for me, because I am obscure, I think it’s more of a privilege I can do that and no one really cares. I just have to block a few people every now and then, but it’s not making a splash.

Anything else you want to get off your chest today?

I would just say that the protests are working and the energy that everybody in my generation has been bringing this year is inspiring and moving and I don’t want anybody to get lazy. So keep calling your reps if you can and don’t be discouraged by the fact that there’s one snowball after the next right now, because I think this is a battle that can be won.

SOURCE PAPER MAG

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