Mike Ruiz
September 14, 2016
In The Mix

Zazie’s Excellent Adventure

Paula Chin

No, it’s not a stage name. The parents of Zazie Beetz were inspired by Zazie in the Metro, the merry 1960 farce from French director Louis Malle, about a young girl’s whirlwind weekend in Paris.

“She’s funky and fun,” Beetz says of the character. “She goes on all these adventures and stirs up a lot of trouble.”

Beetz is also drawing plenty of attention — the good kind. She’s making her TV series debut on FX’s Atlanta, a new comedy about two cousins on their way up through the city’s hip-hop scene.

“I play Van, the girlfriend of one of the rapper’s managers [portrayed by the show’s creator, Community’s Donald Glover],” she says. “I’m excited about the show because it’s not funny in a laugh-track or stereotyped way, but embraces how life can be crazy and sad at the same time. It’s a hybrid that people won’t be expecting.”

Born in Berlin and fluent in German and French, Beetz knows all about duality. “I’m very connected to my dad’s blue-eyed, blond-hair side and my mom’s African-American background,” she says. “That’s helped my acting, because getting into characters and understanding their identity is kind of like crossing cultures and borders.”

And Van’s identity? Well, it’s complicated, and Beetz relishes the challenge.

“Van has very mixed emotions. She and Don’s character have a young daughter, and Van is conscious of her responsibilities but also wishes she could shirk them. She loves and supports him, but resents him for living the life she’d love to have. She goes through some really hard stuff.”

Just three years into her professional career, Beetz is starting to pick up speed. She appears in the upcoming Netflix anthology series Easy, starring in two episodes opposite James Franco. Two movies are also in the works.

And like Van, Beetz is a little conflicted.

“I’m anxious to do good work as an actress and earn my place telling people’s stories,” she says. “But I’m also hoping to get a break for a couple weeks so I can go visit my grandparents in Germany, which I used to do every summer. It’s always good getting back to your roots.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 8, 2016

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