Nesta Cooper on Ageing Out of Teen Roles, Unlocking Her Rage and Being Canadian
Words: Rob Corsini | Photography and Creative Direction: Dara Feller | Styling: Michy Milli | Makeup: Eden Lattanzio | Hair: Alex Thao | Videographer: Camille Mariet
Nesta Cooper is nice, like really nice. On-camera, she’s known for taking on intense, combative, physically demanding roles, but her off-screen persona couldn’t be any more different. “I really enjoy people. I enjoy kindness. I enjoy community. And I guess I can be a little passive aggressive,” she laughs.
While she can’t pinpoint where this kindness comes from, the people in her life think they’ve figured it out. “All my friends are like ‘Oh God, you’re so Canadian’. I didn’t know what they meant by that. But the older I get, the more I realise that there’s no other way my personality could have been made.” As she wades through a laundry list of potential Canadian stereotypes over a Zoom call, she lands on a fixed theory, “I think what they attribute to it is maybe a wholesomeness. Even though, Canadian’s are obviously not a monolith.”
It’s with this wholesomeness that Nesta brings a sense of humanity and softness to characters in unforgiving situations. She’s played one of the only sighted people in a world struck with blindness in See; a special operative tasked with stopping the collapse of society in Travelers; and most recently, a lawyer trying to protect a man she becomes entangled with on Dope Thief.
“I felt like it's such an interesting allegory for any minority in North America.”
Dope Thief tells the story of two friends who accidentally steal from one of the largest drug operations in Philadelphia. As they’re hunted down by the gang and the DEA, they’re forced into increasingly desperate situations to survive. By any measure, it’s an intense show, and it’s easy to think those heightened emotions could bleed through to the working environment, but for Nesta that wasn’t the case. “It was truly a very warm, collaborative, fun experience,” she says. Even as the production dealt with on screen violence and a five-month pause in filming due to the 2023 Writer’s Strike, Dope Thief always felt like it was in safe hands, which Nesta credits to star and producer Brian Tyree Henry. “He has that energy that makes people excited to show up and be filmmakers. It’s special.”
Creating a supportive community behind the scenes is something that Nesta’s believes should be treated with as much care as the final product. “I think I was very lucky because, from the beginning of my career, I've had a lot of opportunities to work with really, really great leaders.” She enthuses, “Just kind, hardworking actors. I was able to see that you could have a successful TV show where the lead was generous, and knew people's names, and showed up on time, and was professional. So I try to show up like that”. For Nesta, this is why niceness continues to be an intentional practice, as she believes that care and respect create the perfection conditions to make art.
Gown: Kristina K | Cuff: Georgina Jewelry | Ring: J.Sheffner
These role models have given Nesta a blueprint for the next stage of her career, where she’ll step into leadership. “I am such a Sagittarius in that I'm very philosophical about myself and how I want to continue to grow.” she smiles, as she details her next projects – a workplace comedy she’s currently shooting in Vancouver, a voice-acting role in an anime, and an adaptation of Bethany C. Morrow’s novella Mem – which Nesta is writing, starring in, and executive producing.
Mem tells the story of an alternative 1920s Montreal, in which a scientist has invented a procedure where a person’s memories can be extracted and replayed by half-living humanoid creatures called mems. The story follows the first mem capable of forming her own memories. “Because she's technically not a ‘person’ she is constantly being questioned by everyone in her life,” notes Nesta,
Mem’s story provides a unique opportunity for Nesta, who knows stepping behind the camera isn’t just about producing television, it’s also about opening the doors for performers underrepresented in the industry. As a young actress, Nesta was auditioning for a small pool of roles for Black performers, even fewer of which were leads – but Mem allows her to tell a narrative with a dark-skinned Black woman squarely in the central role, and to provide that opportunity to a rising actress.
“If I’m scared by it, I know it’ll be good for me - a stretch of my artistic muscles.”
The struggle to find good roles feels even more resonant for Nesta now, as she navigates a new chapter in her acting life. When she entered the industry, she was able to find roles as teenagers and young adults – but she was warned that her late twenties and early thirties would be a tougher period. “People were saying it's going to be hard to get work, a lot of actresses quit during that time, because you're too old to play a teenager and you're too young to play a mom,” she sighs, “I think that’s why my role in Dope Thief is so important to me, because it’s the first role that’s my next stage as an actor.”
As Nesta looks forward to this new chapter, she has a defined ethos for choosing her roles.“If I’m scared by it, I know it’ll be good for me - a stretch of my artistic muscles.” The roles that scare Nesta are always the ones that she doesn’t know if she can do – be it because they’re physically demanding or because they’re exploring new emotional depths.
Earring: Vintage | Top: Proenza | Skirt: Christopher Kane
“The first time that I was able to go inside myself and dig up a certain emotion, whether it was anger or sadness or pure joy, it almost felt like a superpower,” Nesta confides. Through her roles, Nesta has been able to work through emotions that she doesn’t think she would have otherwise been able to express. In Kemba she explored perseverance in the face of injustice; in Travellers the pressure of balancing intense responsibilities; and her character in See helped her to process the passing of her own mother.
Headpiece: PR SOLO Private Archive | Gown: Kristina K | Clutch: Phillip Plein | Gloves: Stylist own
Still, there’s one feeling that Nesta’s particularly looking to explore in her next set of roles. “The hardest emotion for me to get to is rage. I used to think it was just because I was just not that kind of person - like I’m a nice girl, going back to being Canadian. But I think that we all carry every emotion inside of us. And I’ve been learning in my thirties that it’s important that we get it out.”
When it comes to her dream character, the choice is clear. “I just want to play a character that allows me to let it out,” she laughs, “I am in therapy, by the way.”
