The Rising Stars You’re About to See Everywhere

Simone Ashley

When Simone Ashley received the script for the second season of Netflix’s Bridgerton, she was wrapping the final episodes of the comedy-drama series Sex Education in London. On the verge of being a “technically unemployed actress again,” Ashley, a native of Surrey, England, landed the lead role of Bridgerton’s Kate Sharma. Ashley describes Kate as an “independent, competitive rule breaker, who comes across as quite strong and brave and has that fighting exterior, but she is also incredibly vulnerable.” (“Kate is also really witty and I’m not really like that,” she adds.) Ashley says she developed “really, really great chemistry” with costar Jonathan Bailey, who plays her love interest, Anthony Bridgerton. “Kate really puts her family first,” Ashley teases of the new season. “When the stakes of love come with family as well—it’s very different.” —Ariana Yaptangco

Demi Singleton & Saniyya Sidney

Like your average teenagers, Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney are prone to giggling fits, especially when someone brings up the name of their King Richard costar Will Smith. “Every time you were with him, it was just jokes upon jokes,” says Singleton, who plays the young tennis legend Serena Williams in the highly anticipated biopic. “You’d laugh until you almost wet yourself.” But when it came time to step up to the net, the girls knew to get serious. “There were times when it was hard, and I cried and was sore and in pain, but it was definitely fora great reason,” says Sidney, who plays Venus Williams. The story follows Richard Williams, portrayed by Smith, as he paves the way for his daughters’ groundbreaking tennis careers. Singleton and Sidney studied videos of the Williams sisters’ games to ensure their styles matched the real thing. “Both of us now know how to play just like them—” Sidney begins, before Singleton interrupts: “No, no. We now know how to look like we play like them.” —Lauren Puckett-Pope

Diana Silvers

The elite ballerina whom Diana Silvers plays in this fall’s Birds of Paradise doesn’t stray too far from her personal frame of reference. “I was a very competitive tennis player, and I think [director Sarah Adina Smith] really tapped into my nature when it comes to sports,” she says. The movie, which was filmed in Hungary, paired Silvers once again with a female film director, an exciting development for the actress, whose breakout role in 2019’s Booksmart was directed by Olivia Wilde. “I want to break into directing at some point,” says Silvers, 23, who has written a short film she hopes to make one day. “It’s really inspiring to be around women who are doing that because it shows you, ‘Hey, it’s possible.’” Silvers, who began working as a model while a student at New York University, was recently chosen to serve as “une fille Celine.” The partnership is an ideal fit for her easygoing aesthetic, she says. “I never would have expected anyone to want anything to do with me in the fashion world—I was so taken aback and honored.” —Adrienne Gaffney

Emilia Jones

The opening scene of CODA shows Emilia Jones on a fishing boat belting out Etta James at the top of her lungs. Her voice is powerful yet angelic, but no one aboard can hear her. The film follows Jones as Ruby, the sole hearing member of a deaf family (or CODA, a child of deaf adults), who’s taking vocal lessons after school and dreams of attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music. To prepare for the role, the English actress trained for nine months with an American Sign Language teacher, immersed herself in deaf culture, and practiced singing on her days off from filming Netflix’s Locke & Key. “To be deaf is so much more than sign language—it’s an experience that no hearing person can ever fully understand,” she says. “That’s what I love about acting: You can play different characters, go to places you would never normally go, and meet people that you wouldn’t normally meet.” —Claire Stern

Moses Ingram

Moses Ingram is tired—“but it’s the kind of tired I’ve always wanted to be,” says the 27- year-old Baltimore native. She was still in Berlin filming The Queen’s Gambit when she found out she’d booked the role of Lady Macduff in one of this year’s most-anticipated films, The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Queen’s Gambit was her first major job after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, playing the candid-but-caring orphan Jolene—a role for which she received an Emmy nomination: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” she says. “I just got really close to the floor, because I guess I needed some stability.” She was also shocked to find out she’d be performing alongside Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington in Macbeth. “At this point in my career, the fact that they thought I was worthy enough to be in the same room with them was crazy. You don’t want to be the weak link in the chain, so you just rise to the occasion, and jump in.” —Madison Feller

Leslie Grace

New York keeps calling Leslie Grace back. The 26-year-old Bronx-born actress and three-time Latin Grammy nominee was a natural to play Nina in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s big-screen version of In the Heights. “I’m very much like Nina, attached to my block, family, community, and to where I feel supported—where I can be myself,” she says. “But at some point you have to venture out into the world and share your gifts in spaces that might not be as comfortable as how you feel when you’re at home.” For her next act, Grace is stepping even further outside her comfort zone—and into an entirely new Gotham—as Barbara Gordon in Warner Bros. Pictures’ forthcoming Batgirl. It’s a steep learning curve for someone who didn’t grow up reading comics, but in a way it feels like fate. “My best friend and I called each other Batman and Robin growing up,” she says. “When she found out I got [the part], she was like, ‘All this time, we’ve been manifesting this!’” —Rose Minutaglio

This article appears in the November 2021 issue of ELLE.

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