Have you heard about Whitney Peak? No?
Well, it’s about time you did. If not for anything else, but because at age 16, she landed a lead role in HBO Max’s reboot of Gossip Girl.
Gossip Girl, is a modern riff on the original from the early aughts, with a new cast of characters populating the hallowed halls of Constance Billard, a tony prep school on the Upper East Side. It is a sequel to the hit teen drama TV series with the same title which was released in 2007.
Peak plays Zoya Lott, a new girl with a secret that is set to upend the school’s social hierarchy. After 2 Seasons, the show which premiered in July 2021 was canceled.
To be given such a lead role in such a show goes to tell how consequential Peak is likely to be in acting.
Interestingly, she has said, she actually secured the Gossip Girl role after only one taped audition. She was 16 at the time and she recorded the audition in 2019 one day after school, and then came to Uganda to attend her sister’s wedding. She stayed for Christmas and a little bit into January, before returning home to Canada.
Peak has played roles in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Molly’s Game. Others are Legends of Tomorrow, iZombie, Hocus Pocus 2 and Helvellyn Edge and Apple TV’s Home Before Dark. For her part, Peak can’t believe the enviable position she finds herself in as a burgeoning star and designer muse.
Her glowing profile notwithstanding, many Ugandans are oblivious to the fact that the 19-year-old actress was born in Uganda.
She was born in Kampala to a Ugandan mother who is a hairdresser and a Canadian dad who is a helicopter pilot and engineer. She is the youngest of her siblings – two sisters and a brother. Having been raised in Canada, she moved to New York City at the start of 2021 to film Gossip Girl. She said adjusting to life New York City was as challenging as her character (in the HBO show) found it to be.
“She is new to NYC, so we were both kind of navigating that,” Peak said in a Vogue interview in 2021.
“She’s real, imperfect, bruised, and broken but still prevails and continues to wish only happiness for those in her life. Learning from her mistakes and always choosing to stay true to herself in the end.”
In 2021, Peak was named ambassador for British-based French luxury fashion house, Chanel, joining names like Carole Bouquet (French actress), Kristen Stewart (American actress), and Jennie Kim (South Korean singer and rapper) who too have been Chanel’s ambassadors.
“Honestly, I never dreamed I’d get the attention of such a reputable house, let alone the pleasure of working with and representing them,” she told Vogue, adding; “I’m looking forward to showing how versatile and timeless Chanel is.”
Peak got her big break in acting in 2015 when she was doing background work on the TV series Minority Report. She was cast as the younger version of Lara Vega, the character played by American actress, Meagan Good.
Colin Lawrence who was a co-star was so impressed with her performance that he ended up connecting her to his agency, Play Management.
But earlier as a teenager, Peak had made her mark playing small but pivotal roles in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. She has previously said that for the longest time, acting was just a thing she did on the side as a little hobby. Things shifted, however, when she started acting classes. That’s when she began to see acting as something she was actually interested in.
Growing up, she watched Disney Channel, live action TV series. And it was watching people (actors) that looked like her who “made it not so bizarre” that one day, maybe, she too would be an actor. Raven (That’s So Raven), China Anne McClain (A.N.T Farm), Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman (Shake It Up) are some of the actors that inspired her.
Like several other actors, she has disclosed that she has suffered impostor syndrome (a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud).
“You just kind of have to believe that everything happens for a reason and whatever comes to you is meant to be yours. So, you have to get out of your head and get rid of your ego and stop being so damn self-deprecating. Just appreciate it and take it as it comes to you,” she said in an Elle interview.
Pursuing school and an acting career might have distanced her from Uganda, but Peak is still plugged in the Ugandan culture. In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Peak was asked what she would eat if she was stuck on an island and had to pick one food to eat forever. She said ‘kikomando’, the popular Ugandan on-the-go meal which is a mix of chapatti and beans.
“There’s this Ugandan delicacy called chapati and my mom makes it with beans stew. Like I would just eat that for years. It’s so good,” the actress told Harper’s Bazaar.
“Nobody is going to know what I’m talking about but that’s what I would eat. Anything Ugandan cuisine, African cuisine,” she added.
She has also said that part of how her Ugandan mom raised her was making sure that she (Peak) can take care of herself how to be independent, and that this has helped her a lot, especially in the film industry.
