Lexi Underwood Almost Quit Acting Before Being Cast in 'Little Fires Everywhere'
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Lexi Underwood made her stage debut at age 10, her Broadway debut at age 12, and her television debut at age 14. For her 15th birthday, she asked her parents if she could start a production company … as her gift. She is the former star of The Lion King's national tour, the current star of Little Fires Everywhere, and founder of her very own Ultimate Dreamer Productions. To say she is an accomplished 16-year-old would be quite the understatement.
In two years, she plans to attend college (her eyes are on NYU), but before then, the Washington, D.C., native is taking on the breakout role of Pearl Warren in Hulu’s eight-part adaptation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 instant best seller of the same title. Set in 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio, the show tells the tale of two families whose lives become deeply interwoven—and forever changed—when Pearl and her mother, played by an incendiary Kerry Washington, move to town.
BAZAAR.com catches up with Underwood to discuss her very personal—and arduous—Little Fires audition process, the mega-talented women she’d love to collaborate with in the future, and her dreams of working behind the camera.
The main takeaway from our conversation? If Underwood is a driving force of Hollywood’s next generation, we’re all going to be just fine.
I’m such a fan of the book and just think this adaptation is incredible. How did you come to find this project, and what drew you to the character of Pearl?
About a year before I auditioned, a friend of mine told me about the project. I think this was a couple weeks after they announced that Kerry and Reese were going to be playing Elena and Mia, and it was going to be a TV adaptation. I hadn’t read the book yet, but I was familiar with the story. I mean, it was a best seller at the time. I put the name of the show-slash-book in my notes, and it said, “Make sure that you audition for this when auditions open.”
Wow. Was this like a vision board situation?
It was, actually! I was just highly anticipating the audition, because I absolutely love Kerry. I absolutely love Reese. To even get the chance to audition, in my mind, was so incredibly cool. About a year later, I got the audition, but the day before my audition, I actually lost a pilot. I was absolutely devastated, and I was at the point where I wanted to quit acting. I was ready to pack up and go home. I didn’t want to do the audition for Little Fires.
Were there other reasons for that?
I’d been doing this for almost five years now. It’s been a journey. There’s been a lot of nos. There’s also been a lot of yeses. I’m not from L.A., I’m from D.C. It was that sense of missing home at that point. I was like, I don’t even know what I’m doing. My mom told me, “You’ve been wanting this audition for so long. Just go in and give it your all, and whatever happens, happens. And after, if you don’t book it and you want to go back home, then that’s totally fine.”
I went into the audition room with the mindset that Little Fires was going to be my last audition. I put my all into it, but I didn’t get my hopes up. I walked into the room and was like, Whatever happens, happens. That exact night, actually, I got a call from [casting director] David Rubin saying that I was pinned for the role. Pinned means that they have a hold on you, that they really want you for the role. I was excited, but at the same time, I was also like, I’m not gonna get my hopes up because I’ve heard that before.
I auditioned on a Friday, and then I got an email on a Monday saying that I had to do chemistry reads with Jade Pettyjohn, who plays Lexie Richardson, and Gavin Lewis, who plays Moody Richardson. To know they were already cast was super nerve-racking. I felt like the pressure was definitely on. But as soon as I got to the audition, everybody was so incredibly sweet. Jade and Gavin, everybody just immediately clicked in the audition room. It didn’t even feel like an audition, honestly. It just felt like we were having fun. We got to genuinely play with these scenes and with these characters.
Sometimes, I don’t necessarily know if it will be my last time playing that character, when you have callbacks or final auditions. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. I felt as though that could be the last time I was playing Pearl, if I didn’t book the role. So I was just like, I’m going to give this my all. I’m going to totally play with it and do everything that I can to bring Pearl to life in front of David Rubin and Liz Tigelaar, who’s the showrunner. For me, that’s what made those auditions so fun. I felt as though I really took that time to just be connected to Pearl. Maybe three days later, I got a call that I booked the role, which was just so surreal to me. The process took place in a week, so to wait a whole year …
And after such a big letdown, to have this high happen so quickly …
Words can’t even describe how I was feeling in that moment. There were a lot of tears, a lot of smiles.
Did you have a sense of how big of a deal this would be, taking on these beloved characters in this best-selling book?
Oh, definitely. To have Reese and Kerry as a part of it, to look at the projects that they do. Reese was coming off of Big Little Lies and Morning Show, and this is Kerry’s first [big show] since Scandal. On set, just seeing how everyone operates, we knew that we were all going to be a part of something so special that would have a lasting impact on the viewers. I’m nervous, but I’m really excited to see what everyone thinks of it, because we put in a lot of hard work.
And now you have to let it go.
Right. Which is kind of hard. I recently saw Celeste Ng, the author of Little Fires Everywhere, and she was saying how proud she was of the final results. She was pouring out to me, saying there was nobody else that could have played Pearl. To hear that feedback from the person who wrote these characters and wrote this story—it meant everything. If we got Celeste’s approval, that, at the end of the day, is enough.
At what point in this process did you meet Kerry and Reese? Tell me a little bit about what you learned from them.
About three weeks after I booked the role, my friend was doing a pilot with Leslie Odom Jr., actually, and Kerry was a producer. It was a live taping, so my friend told us all to come. I didn’t think Kerry would be there, it didn’t register in my mind. You know, Kerry’s a busy lady! But as soon as I saw her, my heart was beating so fast. It was my first time seeing her, because I didn’t get to see her throughout any of the audition process. The whole time the show went by, we locked eyes a couple times, and then the show was over. I went down, and she immediately saw me and she just screamed, “Are you my daughter!?” And that in and of itself meant the world to me.
She embraced me with such a warm hug, and I got to meet everybody at Simpson Street [her production company]. Everyone who was going to be working on Little Fires Everywhere on behalf of Kerry was there. That was super exciting to finally meet people who were going to be a part of that creative process with me. That made everything so real. Because for the past three weeks, I was just pinching myself, not really knowing how it was real, just reading Little Fires Everywhere over and over again, just trying to wrap my brain around everything.
My first time meeting Reese was actually at the table read. I was sitting at the table, and Reese and Kerry both walked in, and that was the Richardson kids’ first time meeting Kerry, and my first time meeting Reese, and we were all just so excited. They both embraced all of us with such kindness and such warmth and honestly it made us very comfortable, because we were super nervous. It was the first table read in front of Hulu, but they just made us so comfortable. The energy and light that they brought in the room just made everybody feel as though they were meant to be there.
The first day of filming, a gift that Kerry left in my trailer was a pearl bracelet, and it said, “Pearls for my Pearl.” And that absolutely made me melt inside. I was crying. And then we had lunch. Kerry and I sat down and talked about how we were going to play the roles of Mia and Pearl. In the book, you don’t necessarily know what race they are. And so we had a conversation about how we were going to bring the elements of an authentic Black mother-and-daughter relationship to the relationship with Mia and Pearl.
Can you explain what specifically you discussed that would be special to the relationship?
I think it’s just parenting. I know in my household how I would talk to my mom and how, if I talk to my mom very out of bounds, how it would be taken. So in our first couple of argument scenes—they were written like they are in the book—we wanted to make sure we were still being authentic to the appropriate boundaries that were set. You don’t get to see what they went through before or what their life was like before Shaker Heights. But I can imagine Pearl wasn’t really talking to Mia in the way that she’s talking to her when she gets to Shaker. You can tell this is their first time having arguments like these. For us, that was the biggest thing. The first time that you see Mia and Pearl’s world, it’s an encounter with the police, in the car, and what that looked like to us. We made the decision to make it so that Pearl already knows what’s happening as soon as Mia says, “Hands on the dashboard.” For that to establish Mia and Pearl’s story is super empowering, honestly.
Now that you’ve worked with both Reese and Kerry, do you have any other dream collaborators?
Right now, it’s probably Viola Davis. I would absolutely love to work with her. Every single role that Viola steps in, she embodies it. From the stories that I’ve heard, she gives her counterparts her all, which is what Kerry did as well. I would love to work with more actors like that. And also Meryl Streep, because she’s Meryl Streep—and absolutely incredible.
That’s reason enough. Do you have favorite projects from either of them?
I was watching Big Little Lies last night and just knowing how Meryl tapped into that role, for me, I have so much respect. She embodied that role of Perry’s mom. For Viola, probably Fences. I watched that scene between her and Denzel, when she’s crying, all the time. It’s a masterclass in itself, just watching that.
You’re still young, but at what point did you know you wanted to be in the entertainment industry?
Ever since I was little, I was so infatuated with everything concerning the arts. I was in ballet classes, I took singing lessons, I started taking acting classes as a hobby. When I was younger, I had my mind set on dancing or singing. Acting kind of came along the way after, due to my love and respect for theater. I never set out to be a TV or film actor. Theater was my number one priority. I didn’t really have any experience acting until I played a role in A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theatre. I was nine years old, and for me, that was the best thing ever. I was so excited, all of my friends and family came down—but that was my first time really getting to act. After I did that, I was so in love with the arts and theater. Then I did The Lion King, and after that, I told my parents I don’t want to stop. I felt, in that moment, like this was what I was honestly placed on this earth to do and that it would be a crime to not continue to do it and just to massage my craft, to make myself even better.
Do you miss the theater at all? Do you envision a return to the stage anytime soon?
I do. I miss the theater a lot. My dream role … I want to be in Hamilton super bad. When I’m old enough, I would absolutely love to go and be in Hamilton.
What’s the best or worst career advice you’ve ever received?
The worst advice that I’ve gotten was to take every no for what it is. It took me a while to understand this, but now I feel like I finally have a firm grasp of the true meaning of the word no. I used to be so devastated when people would tell me no. But now I see every no as it wasn’t meant to be. That’s somebody else’s blessing and not mine. That’s a door that closed and will be something great for someone else. But it just means that another blessing and another door is about to open up, whatever that is.
Right? Thank God you lost that pilot.
Exactly! If I hadn’t lost that pilot, I wouldn’t have booked Little Fires Everywhere.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Hopefully still acting. I opened up my own production company for my 15th birthday. My production company is called Ultimate Dreamer Productions. Basically, an ultimate dreamer is an audacious visionary. The name came about when I first got my Instagram. I was trying to come up with names, and I came up with the term ultimate dreamer. That was available! Nobody else was doing it.
So @LexiUnderwood wasn’t cutting it?
@LexiUnderwood just simply wasn’t cutting it! Ultimate Dreamer was cutting it.
So people actually started calling me The Ultimate Dreamer when I would show up and do stuff, and my parents would be so confused. I almost created my own little online presence. I was 10, maybe. I created my own brand at 10. Fast-forward to when I was fifteen, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said I wanted to open up my own production company. It was only right to call it Ultimate Dreamer Productions, because it truly embodied what I stood for, and the projects that I wanted to produce. We help and finance stories by underrepresented minorities, especially in my community, that don’t really have the platform to be able to tell the stories that they want to tell. For my production company, [I see myself] producing and directing even more in my future.
I was actually shadowing on set. I got the opportunity on Episodes 6 and 7 to shadow our two main directors. Just to see them working in their atmosphere, creating, I feel like I learned so much. Even sitting in video village with the writers and producers, seeing what goes on. When you get a note on set, the conversation that goes into that, I feel like I gained more respect and more knowledge for the producers, writers, and directors. I’ve actually been shadowing postproduction lately. I’ve been kind of lucky, because I’ve gotten to see some scenes from Little Fires Everywhere. With that, I feel like I’ve learned more even as an actor to give more versions of a scene, because that makes it easier in post—not just for yourself but for the post team. I see myself dabbling more behind the camera and creating more as producer and director, and as an actor.
Okay, final question: Who was your first celebrity crush?
Probably Harry Styles. He’s still my celebrity crush.
By the way, mine too.
Good, we’re on the same page!
Yes, only 25 years apart.
I loved One Direction. I still love One Direction. Just everything that he stood for and still stands for, he’s just so incredible. I absolutely love him.
Photos courtesy of Lexi Underwood and Hulu. Design by Ingrid Frahm.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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