Meet Nikki Rodriguez, Netflix’s Next Big YA Star

How do you go from playing the tough teen girlfriend of a South Central gang member to the tender sweetheart of two Colorado high school brothers? If you’re Nikki Rodriguez—who snagged the starring role of Jackie Howard in the new YA drama series My Life With the Walter Boys after briefly appearing in the final season of the Gen Z comedy On My Block—it’s about finding commonality with the material. “I would say there’s a little bit of both characters in my own personality,” Rodriguez says. “I really try to highlight the characteristics of each that I align with.”

For Rodriguez’s latest role, the connection was deep. In the coming-of-age story adapted by executive producer Melanie Halsall from Ali Novak’s novel of the same name, she portrays a sophisticated, ambitious 15-year-old Manhattan high schooler whose life is suddenly upended when her family is killed in a car accident.

“I’ve been on my own from a young age, and I suppose that’s probably what really drew me to Jackie,” the guarded actor tells VF. “I didn’t grow up in a typical family dynamic…. [and] I know exactly what it feels like…having to juggle all these challenges of growing up and how hard that can be. I really had to learn how to be strong and independent early on and not rely on anybody, and that’s a lot like Jackie.”

The petite 20-something performer (she’s loath to reveal her exact age) is an only child who was raised mostly by her British German mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and moved to LA straight out of school to study acting after a trial run, accompanied by her Mexican dad, when she was 15.

“My family died…and nobody knows what to say to you when that happens,” the usually stoic Jackie tells her new school guidance counselor Tara (Ashley Holliday Tavares) in the first episode, after the grieving tenth grader has been sent to live with her fashion-designer mother’s veterinarian best friend, Dr. Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty, late of Suits). Her new guardian is mother to a brood of 10 (including one daughter and two nephews), living with her rancher husband, George (Marc Blucas), in rural Colorado. There, Jackie must navigate a completely new life—and the complicated feelings she develops for two of the Walter brothers.

Broody and charismatic Cole (Noah LaLonde)—whom we meet exiting a swimming pool in slow motion—is the town’s high school football star and girl magnet, though his quarterback days are over due to an accident that’s permanently damaged his leg. His sweet and geeky one-year-younger brother, Alex (Ashby Gentry), loves books (he’s rereading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring), video games, and riding horses—and he quickly catches feelings for Jackie.

Rodriguez’s winning performance as the grieving teen caught up in a romantic triangle—and stymied by a new school that doesn’t offer enough AP classes—was further aided by how similar the actor is to her alter ego. Both of them have a type A, overachiever vibe—though “I’m a little less emotionally introverted,” she says, and “tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, where she sometimes does not.”