V GIRLS
LOVIE WEARS ALL CLOTHING MISSONI
TOUCHED BY CALIFORNIA FIRES, TRUMP’S TRAVEL BAN, AND MORE, THEIR IRL STORIES RIVAL THEIR STELLAR FILMS IN MATERIAL. Photography Hadar Pitchon Fashion Ketevan Gvaramadze Text Maxwell Williams
LOVIE SIMONE Even when fending off a cold, Lovie Simone’s bubbly personality courses through the phone. She’s in Atlanta, filming the fourth season of OWN’s Greenleaf—a soap about the family behind a controversial Memphis megachurch. “I watch almost every episode,” she says. “I like seeing what the other actors were doing when I wasn’t on set. And I haven’t seen any other shows about a church family [like this one].” As ebullient as she is offscreen, Simone has a knack for playing rebellious and defiant, both on Greenleaf as Zora and as Jenna in Share, one of Sundance’s most talked-about films, also starring fellow V Girl Rhianne Barreto. And as the tough-as-nails leader of a drug-slinging, vindictive clique in Selah and the Spades, another Sundance favorite, Simone says she was able to find a toughness she 46 VMAGAZINE.COM
didn’t know that she had. dad is from Kumasi, Ghana, and came [to “I learned a lot about myself while the U.S.] when he was 10,” says Simone. playing Selah, and I feel like I’ve become “African parents are generally really big a little more like her; I’m really stern now on education, but [my dad] actually really about setting my boundaries,” says supported me when I didn’t want to go Simone of playing the whip-smart, antihe- to college and do Greenleaf [instead]. roic Selah Summers. “And about having They’ve both always been very free in people come to me with respect. That’s letting me be my artistic self. [Now] we— the vibe that Selah gives off: If you don’t my parents and my twin sister—all live like me, at least you respect me. I mean, together in Georgia.” I don’t know if I would do something as Though Simone is just 20 years old, crazy insane as drugging someone just she says she’s in the process of writto get people to respect me, but I do like ing a novel. “It’s going to be about findhow upfront and open Selah is. You will ing self,” she says. “I eventually want to never question where she stands, ever.” turn [it] into a movie.” With her luminous Having grown up in the Bronx watch- confidence on and off camera, there’s ing Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie little doubt Simone’s literary debut will movies, Simone always had her parents’ pack a punch. But until we’re able to read support in her pursuit of acting—some- Simone on the page, we’ll gladly be staything of a blessing, she’s come to real- ing tuned for more of the strong, firey ize. “My mom is from the Bronx, and my characters she brings to life on screen.
