If I want to see more roles for women like myself, then I have to find the courage to get out of my own way and create them.

The Last New Year

Lead actor | Writer | Executive Producer | MUA

For NK, The Last New Year, was born from a pure desire to work more. It’s guaranteed that anyone who is called to this business has, at some point, experienced both the agony and ecstasy that naturally comes along with the work. NK had come to a place in her career where the game of waiting for a role that was “leading lady-ish,” yet “charactery,” “quirky,” but “hot,” with a splash of “ethnically ambguous” flare, became a game she no longer had interest in playing.

Her mentor, accomplished actor/writer/director, Morocco Omari, always told her, “While you’re waiting you should be creating.” NK considered herself a proficient writer, confidently banging out term papers and the like, while occasionally dabbling in poetic stanzas, but she admits having never tried her hand at creative writing. So, when the opportunity arose for her on-camera class to take a screenplay writing course with accomplished writer/director Ade Akisanya, NK decided to give it a go.

About a year after finishing the course, she attended the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where Ava Duvernay became the first African-American woman to win Best Director. It was in that weekend that not only was the idea for TLNY born, but more importantly, the audacity to dream bigger was ignited in NK’s being. Ms. Duvernay’s win that weekend solidified the notion that if NK wanted to see more roles for women like herself, she had to find the courage to get out of her own way and create them.