Renée Elise Goldsberry Gets to ‘Set Some Crazy Things Free’ with Her Character Wickie Roy on ‘Girls5Eva’

After her Tony Award-winning performance as Angelica Schuyler in the original Broadway cast of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s “Hamilton,” Renée Elise Goldsberry’s career finally hit a hot streak. She earned roles in films like “Waves” and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” as well as TV shows like “Documentary Now” and “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” but, in a recent interview with Variety, Goldsberry said it was her character Wickie Roy on “Girls5Eva” that finally gave her the opportunity to unleash her wild side.

​​“I believe as actors we get a license to set some crazy things free within ourselves, and that’s what Wickie gives me,” Goldsberry said. “A license to not only dress and style myself in a certain way, but a freedom to not check the part of me that feels like it is important to share anything.”

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What makes Wickie so funny as a character is how little basis she has for her inflated sense of self. Rather than make this a feature played for stupid laughs, Goldsberry found a way to relate it to her own experience, then even allowed Wickie’s nature to color her own.

​​“It is so liberating for me. Especially as I get older, I feel like it is less appropriate to allow your ambition to grow,” she said to Variety. “Sometimes I feel like — especially as a mother and a wife and feeling really blessed to have had some wonderful success in my life — it feels most appropriate to settle into gratitude and say, ‘This was great, wasn’t it?’ And that is just not Wickie. She feels entitled, and I need her help to feel entitled.’”

This isn’t to say Goldsberry doesn’t need to be steered in the right direction from time to time. In fact, after the first season, she was worried about the role going to her head.

“When I was first gifted Wickie, I went in blind. I let them dress me up and put these brilliant words in my mouth and let me figure it out as I went,” said Goldsberry. “It felt so wonderful and natural and satisfying that, when I got into the second season, I was concerned that I might be too self-aware, and I might play at the idea of her. I remember saying to Jeff Richmond, who directed the Season 2 premiere, ‘Check me, please. If she has gotten so big in my mind that she is not real anymore, check me.’”

Originally airing on Peacock, “Girls5Eva” was given new life on Netflix for its third season. It has yet to be announced whether a fourth season is in the cards, but Goldsberry and others picking up some well-deserved awards for the show certainly couldn’t hurt that prospect.

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