Meet Crissa 'Ace' Jackson From Netflix's 'The Circle' Season 4
After months of anticipation, season 4 of Netflix's social media reality series The Circle is finally here. The first four episodes dropped earlier today, and fans can expect the next few batches of episodes to be released weekly until May 25th.
This season has a must-watch cast and some extra special guest stars, but one contestant in particular has people clamoring for more. Fans want the inside scoop on former pro basketball player Crissa "Ace" Jackson.
Crissa plays as herself on the show (as opposed to a "catfish" pretending to be someone else). And with her sports background, you can be sure that she knows a thing or two about strategy.
Luckily, Crissa was willing to chat with Women's Health just before the show's premiere to share a little more about herself and her time on The Circle. Read on for all the details.
She's a former Harlem Globetrotter.
Before Crissa signed on for The Circle, she was a Harlem Globetrotter. Not only that, but she was only the 13th woman to play for them in 2015, which is a pretty big deal.
While she no longer plays with the Globetrotters, she looks back fondly on her time with the team . "It was a great experience being able to travel all over the world and inspire others," she says. "And now, I'm even more global than before. So it's been a blessing on the opportunities I've had in my life, to be honest."
She fell in love with basketball in California.
Crissa was born in La Mesa, California before moving to Pennsylvania. She credits her love of basketball to watching her father and brother play together while they lived in California. "I used to hang out with my brother and my dad a lot. So I asked my dad if he could train me. He told me no, I threatened to tell my mom, and then he started training me," she says.
And while Crissa claims her father wasn't the best at basketball, she still managed to fall in love with the sport. "I'd dribble the basketball everywhere. I'd sleep with the basketball. Everything I had was basketball. Purses, nightstand, everything. I'm pretty obsessed, actually," she revealed.
She has a kid and four dogs.
Leaving home to film The Circle was tough for Crissa, but because she already traveled a lot for basketball, it wasn't much of a change for her family, she explains. "We have a daughter and four dogs. But I've traveled so much, and I've been traveling since my daughter was six," says Crissa.
However, with her daughter now 13 years old, she says there's more of an understanding as to why she travels so much for work. "I feel like she's kind of gotten accustomed to it and more so excited like, 'Okay. Where did you go? How was it?' And I can tell them, and hopefully, we'll get to go [back] to that place in the future," Crissa tells WH.
She was already a social media pro.
Crissa is already an influencer on social media with a strong following thanks to her basketball career. And, um, having one million followers on IG and 13.8 million on TikTok is no joke! As such, she didn't feel that much pressure being on the social media reality show. Plus, she's already got the whole competitive thing down.
"I was just like, 'Okay, well I do this already, so I'm kind of already coming in with a little bit of an edge.'" She added that being a point guard in basketball helped her get a feel for running the show, giving her "that full-court vision type of style."
Her wife almost went on The Circle too.
ICYDK, Crissa's wife, Alexis Bianca, also has a large following of Instagram and TikTok. She also creates dance workouts on her fitness page. In a Q&A video on Crissa's YouTube channel, the basketball star revealed that the couple met randomly at a club in San Diego, and the rest was history. A few years later, in December of 2017, the two tied the knot.
As it turns out, Alexis was a fan of The Circle before Crissa even knew about it. "We actually were trying to get in together because I know they did one on the previous season where there were two people that went in together. And I'm a little bit on the naive side," says Crissa. "My wife is a little bit more keen with things like that. She's always been. So I thought she would be a nice little force with me. I feel like we're a strong power couple, anyways."
Her takeaway? Being true to yourself pays off.
While The Circle is just a game show, Crissa feels that there's still a powerful takeaway from the series as a whole:
"Hopefully, some people take this and [think], 'Okay, you can just be yourself. You don't really have to be a catfish to be liked and loved by others.' I really hope that's what a lot of people get out of The Circle in general."
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